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Contributions to Education 

Number I. 



THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 

FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION 

Number I. • 



Isolation in the School 



BY 

ELLA FLAGG YOUNG 

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION 



CHICAGO 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 

1901 



L&/OZS 
XV 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Co^iEa Keceiveb 

JAM 2 1902 

Copyright entr/ 

A^c .^-to C ( 
CLASS O^XXa. Wo, 

2-*5- c O 3 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1901, by 
The University of Chicago 

CHICAGO, ill. 



Isolation in the School 



INTRODUCTION. 

Every state and territory in the United 
States has a system of free schools. The atti- 
tude of the American people toward education 
is evidenced by this general establishment of 
schools and the liberal provision for their sup- 
port. The influence of this attitude on educa- 
tion itself has been twofold: its function and 
scope have been enlarged ; its intrinsic value 
and prestige have been questioned. The 
inadequacy of the old conception of education 
to meet the demands and the doubts has become 
such a prolific source of disquietude and dis- 
satisfaction that ere long a new one must needs 
be constructed. The new standard, with its 
adaptation to social and economic conditions, 
bids fair to be the dominant factor in the social 
product of the future. 

There are many phases to the problem of 
evolving a highly organized social institution 
which shall have that ease in adjustment and 
that adaptation to ends which characterize 
thought in its free activity. To some the 
application of the biological conception of an 
organism to the school, both in its structure 
and workings, is very attractive. There is one 



Isolation in the School 



serious, almost insuperable, objection to the 
application of this conception to the school. 
Take, for example, the human organism. The 
heart, the lungs, and the stomach have each 
the same general end in view, the nourishment 
of the body ; yet time will not readjust the 
functions of these different organs so that their 
specific aims will be materially changed, and 
in some respects interchanged, in securing a 
higher degree of digestion and assimilation of 
food. On the other hand, as the interrelation 
between the various parts of the school 
becomes more effective, it will be evident that 
the particular stress now laid upon one part 
may be transferred advantageously to another. 
If the conception of the school and the specific 
duties of its parts has been cast in the crystal- 
lized form of an organism, it will be most diffi- 
cult, if not impossible, to transfer emphasis of 
function and aim. Indeed, the question may be 
raised right here whether the opposition today, 
in the pedagogical as well as the general mind, 
to a revison of the special aims and methods 
of the different schools does not rest mainly on 
the rhetorical figure of this inflexible organism. 
Herbert Spencer, in enlarging upon the condi- 
tions which led him to observe the analogy 
between society and living things, naturally 
starts with the "cell theory." His argument 



Isolation in the School 



only intensifies the objection herein raised, for 
nowhere does he consider the necessity for 
transfer of function. He considers develop- 
ment, not transfer. 

The western peoples have found themselves 
in the nineteenth century confronted with such 
puzzling questions regarding the life of modern 
society that a new department of investigation 
has come to be recognized. As the method 
of the student of social conditions has advanced 
from the collection and classification of data 
to the search for those laws which permeate 
the social world, it has become evident that 
the school also must be subjected to examina- 
tion from new and many points of view. Influ- 
ences which are hostile to its best development 
must be counteracted ; not by wordy condem- 
nations, but by making their opposites active. 

This essay endeavors to contribute some- 
thing toward the illumination of some of those 
phases of the life of the school in which are 
made manifest the difficulties involved in the 
maintenance of a continuous intellectual and 
moral advance throughout the system because 
of the influence of isolation. The trend of the 
argument will be in accord with this general 
statement: the level of power in the educa- 
tional system is determined by the degree in 
which the principle of cooperation is made 



io Isolation in the School 

incarnate in developing and realizing the aim 
of the school. The questions involved will be 
discussed in three divisions: (i) the various 
parts of this social institution 5(2) some recent 
constructions of psychological, ethical, and 
logical modes that must be recognized in a 
rational conduct of the school; (3) the func- 
tion of the school in a democracy. 
Chicago, March, 1900, 



ISOLATION IN THE SCHOOL. 
I. 

THE PARTS OF THIS SOCIAL INSTITUTION. 

No more remarkable chapter can be found 
in the history of the upward march of the 
human race than the one bearing on education. 
Though the avowed aim of the school has been 
the protection of its wards from the dangers 
of ignorance, yet so limited has been the con- 
ception of the means of protection that 
acquaintance with the values of the past has 
been construed as an efficient and all-sufficient 
engine for defensive and offensive operations 
in the struggle of life. The material with 
which the scholars have worked being tradi- 
tional, and often that which has been discarded 
from the life in the world outside, the spur to 
intellectual activity which comes from the 
unsolved problems in science, art, and ethics 
has been lacking. As the information acquired 
rested largely on the verbal memory, a method 
which should bring into play the elements of 
strength peculiar to each individual was not 
indispensable. Reformers differed merely as 
to where the emphasis on tradition, or where 
the stress of activity in the mind, should be 



12 Isolation in the School 

laid. In these conditions, briefly outlined, 
lies the explanation of that strange chap- 
ter on education extending from the days 
of Plato and Aristotle to a point in time 
less than one hundred and fifty years back. 
Modern pedagogy did not begin to live until 
Rousseau, the faithless father, urged that 
education make human welfare its active prin- 
ciple. 

For the understanding to accept human 
welfare as the aim of the evolution of human 
power is only the first step in securing a 
thoroughgoing comprehension of what is in- 
volved. So pressing is the solution of the 
problem presented by the single question of 
gaining a livelihood, to say nothing about a 
competency, that the consideration of the 
well-being of humanity begins with Herbert 
Spencer's weighing of the claims of egoism 
and altruism, with a marked preponderance on 
the side of the former. With interest in self- 
preservation highly developed on one side 
only, the non-rational, it was but natural that 
modern theory and practice should halt long 
on the plane where education was viewed as 
that discipline which enables the members of 
the human family to make the ascent inde- 
pendently and alone. Slowly is the general 
mind beginning to grasp the idea of the unity 



Isolation in the School l 3 

whose factors are egoism and altruism, indi- 
vidualism and organization. 

The effort which the American people are 
making to secure a clearer comprehension of 
conditions involved in the construction of the 
new ideal has necessitated a focusing of atten- 
tion on the recognized instrument — the school. 
Chief among the defects discovered by this 
focusing is the separation of the school into 
schools — kindergarten, elementary, secondary, 
college, university — each based upon a theory 
and method which in itself is original and final. 
These sharp divisions are not the results of 
differentiation within a recognized unity; on 
the contrary, they are the legitimate outcome 
of the manner in which the idea of the school 
has come to include all the various departments 
mentioned. The parts have been brought to- 
gether mechanically, thus making the accepted 
conception of this great social institution that 
of an aggregation of independent units, rather 
than that of an organization whose successful 
operation depends upon a clearly recognized 
interrelation, as well as distinction, between 
its various members and their particular duties. 

One of the striking signs of the unrest re- 
sulting from the influence of isolation through- 
out the school is the widespread dissatisfaction 
with the loss of time and the ineffective work 



14 Isolation in the School 

which are often attendant upon the entrance of 
the child or youth into the next higher depart- 
ment above that whose course has been com- 
pleted. Some think they have discovered a 
principle underlying the sharp differentiation 
when they suggest the insertion of a connect- 
ing class between the kindergarten and the 
elementary department ; or when they advocate 
the establishment of special schools to act as 
"feeders" from the high schools to secondary 
institutions, which in their turn will overlap the 
college course. The introduction of these 
links, which are not recognized parts of the 
great system, suggests the existence of two 
conditions : (i) The failure on the part of each 
school to secure a working knowledge of the 
method and aim of the other. Shocking as is 
the conduct of those selfish parents in James's 
What Maizie Knew, it is no more so than that 
of the members of teaching corps or faculties, 
who wrap themselves in their togas pedagogi- 
cal and know little of the conditions from 
which their pupils have come and into which 
they will go, except through information ob- 
tained by quizzing the shrewd child or youth. 
(2) The maintenance by the higher school 
of the traditional qualifications for admission 
to its membership, without reference to the 
changes which psychologic study may have 



Isolation in the School J 5 



introduced in the theory and method of the 
lower schools. Although it holds true that the 
instructors in a given subject should be com- 
petent to state the conditions upon which one 
can assume the work required by them, yet it is 
equally true that, with occasional exceptions, 
the nearer a faculty stands to long-established 
educational institutions, the more authoritative 
will be the voice of tradition within its fold. 

On the other hand, the successful issue of 
the efforts of intermediary classes and schools 
points to the necessity for an investigation into 
and determination of sound pedagogic method 
for the different states in the unfolding life of 
the child, the youth, the young man, and the 
young woman. It is not a transition period 
that should command attention, for if there be 
such, then it is a distinct period of itself; but 
it is the two consecutive states which should be 
understood, each with its positive methods and 
interests, yet evolving so gradually out of, or 
into, the other, that the line of demarcation is 
imperceptible. How can there be clear insight 
into conditions lying beyond one's sphere of 
activity, if there be not cooperation between 
the members in the different spheres ? Here 
and there the educational world gives evidence 
of an awakening on the subject of the need for 
the involution of cooperation, as well as differ- 



I 6 Isolation in the School 

entiation, in the effort to make the welfare of 
humanity its goal. The awakenings are only 
sporadic, and often take on the form of an 
exchange of grievances rather than the inter- 
change of suggestive, impersonal criticism. 
This is the result of long-continued activity 
which, because isolated and complete in itself, 
restricts the field of its operations and the power 
of its initiative. When there is an interplay of 
educational thought between the kindergarten 
and the elementary teachers, between the high- 
school and the college faculties, and all along 
the line, sentimentalism and dogmatism will 
give way to scientific method in the study of a 
true correlation of forces which are but slightly 
organized at the present time. That mobility 
of spirit which characterizes an interplay of 
thought between different groups is the basis 
of true cooperation, for each mind in each 
group must exercise its powers of origination 
and execution. It would be interesting to in- 
vestigate the historical conditions under which 
the various departments of the school have 
arisen and been gradually incorporated in the 
general scheme of education, but this inquiry 
is analytic of present, not historic, conditions. 
That which first attracts one's attention in 
the consideration of the individual parts into 
which this loose organization resolves itself is 



Isolation in the School *7 

the composition of the teaching corps or fac- 
ulty. Until the establishment of state univer- 
sities, all college and university communities 
regulated their inner policy independent of 
public control, and as a result their faculties 
were known through a few prominent members 
only. It is within a comparatively recent period 
that these faculties have been subjected to 
comparison and criticism by the public at large. 
Doubtless the manner in which they have 
stepped out of the college halls and have 
taught and debated in the open court has done 
more to break down the traditions, which made 
a broad chasm between them and the world at 
large, than has the founding of universities by 
the different state governments. It is not 
surprising that the modern spirit, which inter- 
ests itself in all classes and conditions of 
humanity, should be measuring the power of 
those whose special work is the most advanced 
with the attainments, culture, and method of 
those whose work lies with the great mass, 
only an infinitesimal part of which ever reaches 
the college. Hence there are two factors, the 
faculties themselves and the modern spirit, 
which are breaking down the divinity that has 
hedged the college and university method. 
Not to be a distinct body receiving students 
from the lower schools, but to become a Dart 



J 8 Isolation in the School 

of the great corps which is molding the race, 
is one of the duties in the future of the college 
faculties. Between the prevailing conditions, 
which are beginning to change, and the neces- 
sary conditions, which will bring knowledge of 
the aims and methods in the earlier depart- 
ments of the school, are many steps. 

Teachers in the academy and high school 
have, until recent date, been beyond the pale 
of public and general criticism. Professional 
life, spent in a limited field of traditional repro- 
duction, has been very like that in the college 
faculties. 

Upon turning to the public elementary 
school we find a teaching corps which is ever 
under the search-light of the public gaze. 
Here may a comprehensive survey be made of 
the influence of isolation. 

Starting with the theory that the public 
schools are inherently opposed to change, 
adverse critics, upon assuming the aggressive, 
demand a radical change in their theory and 
practice. To most of the dissatisfied and the 
critical this demand, coupled with an enumer- 
ation of some petty customs still retained, 
seems a satisfactory explanation of the cause 
of, as well as a prescription of an efficacious 
remedy for, the weakness and mechanism 
deplored most deeply by the teaching corps 



Isolation in the School 19 

itself. When reform stands for change chiefly, 
its outcome will have little or no intrinsic value. 
The saying, "As is the teacher so is the 
school," was for many years the expression of 
the teacher's responsibility. In the course of 
time it was made more incisive : "The teacher 
is the school." From this it was but a short 
cut to charging the "inherent opposition to 
change" upon the teachers. Nothing could be 
more perplexing, more amazing, to the accused 
than this charge. They do not find it neces- 
sary to appeal to the written documents to 
refute this accusation. Memory furnishes ample 
data. The older teachers, through their ex- 
perience as teachers, and the younger, through 
their experience as pupils, can rapidly sum- 
mon evidence on every topic included under 
"The Theory and Practice of Teaching." 
Each of these topics might be outlined in 
three parts : the conditions in the early stage, 
the time of the beginnings of school systems ; 
the conditions during the period of organiza- 
tion and perfection of mechanism, the period 
of retrogression ; the conditions at the present 
time, which to the careless observer seem a 
return to the first, though they are not, for in 
that which has been evolved there are implicit 
new and vital principles. The following will 
illustrate this development : 



Isolation in the School 



a) Loose classification of pupils and subject-matter. 

b) Narrow and uniform grading of each. 

c) Elasticity in promotion of pupils and expansion of 

subject-matter. 

a) Close adherence to text-book, indiscriminate verbal 
memorizing. 

b) Oral method, disappearance of verbal memorizing. 

c) Combination of text- and reference-books, some 

memoritor work. 

a) The three R's + general-culture lectures. 

b) Rigid limitation to three R's + "useful" branches 
only. 

c) Teacher and pupil carrying from five to ten differ- 

ent subjects. 

a) Twenty-minute out-of-door recesses in forenoon 
and afternoon session. 

b) Sessions from two and a half to three hours long, 
without any physical exercise, recreation, or relax- 
ation. 

c) Calisthenics, games, whispering recesses in every 
session, with out-of-door recesses in the long ses- 
sion added. 

As teachers recall the glowing ardor of 
superintendent and principal, as well as the 
vigorous efforts and heroic struggles of the 
teachers in these various movements, all unite 
in saying, the advance of the public school 
like 

"the emigrant's way o'er the Western desert is 
marked by 
Campfires long consumed, and bones that bleach in the 
sunshine." 



Isolation in the School 2I 

Change has been written large over every 
theory and method of instruction and manage- 
ment, attempted in the brief school life of 
those who now constitute the public school 
teaching corps ; and yet, opposition to change, 
the conservatism of the teaching force, is said 
to be the cause of the prevalence of theories 
and methods not in harmony with the time 
spirit of the last decade of the nineteenth 
century. 

What is the influence of the many changes 
made in a way that is hostile to the spirit by 
which the highest type of character is devel- 
oped in rational beings ? It is doubtless true 
that, as a rule, teachers are not commanded to 
make changes in their educational theory and 
method, but when they know what changes 
are desired, a feeling of loyalty to the origi- 
nator as a superior officer, or the ambition to 
rank high in the estimation of that official, or 
the love of something novel, makes the major- 
ity prompt in adopting the new, without 
previous thought as to its desirability, without 
activity of the intellectual conscience. 

What, on the other hand, is the influence on 
the superintendent or the principal of habitu- 
ally performing the function of originating and 
changing ideals for others ? It certainly does 
not make for the highest type of character. 



Isolation in the School 



It tends toward the creation of fixed ideals to 
be described for realization by others. Even- 
tually the originator finds established in the 
school a lifeless model, with a few of the 
features of the original, rigidly set in alto- 
rilievo, making a caricature of what was to its 
author an ideal permeated with a great prin- 
ciple of mental life. Pessimism and icono- 
clasm often follow in the train of such a dis- 
covery. 

Much has been said recently regarding the 
examination and certification of teachers. 
Superintendents of city schools have indorsed 
the statement in the Report of the Committee 
of Fifteen that "the superintendent should 
have power to appoint from an eligible list all 
assistants and teachers authorized by the board 
of education, and have unlimited power to 
assign them to their respective positions, and 
reassign them, or remove them from the force 
at his discretion." Sufficient emphasis has 
not been laid on two facts. These two are : 
(i) in six of the ten largest cities the eligible 
list is made up from the results of an exami- 
nation given by the superintendent; (2) the 
uncultured and non-progressive principals and 
teachers now in service in the schools must, at 
some former period of time, have been in the 
judgment of the superintendent, among the best 



Isolation in the School 2 3 

applicants for certificates. Stress is laid upon 
these, not for the purpose of entering into a 
discussion of the rights and duties which 
should inhere in the office of superintendent, 
but to indicate the absence of that interaction 
between the workers and their work which 
should exist, and which would keep alive the 
mental process in the individuals of the educa- 
tional force, so that many of the best among the 
applicants for certificates would not become 
inefficient while actually engaged in teaching. 
The teaching corps in any system of schools 
will attain a high degree of efficiency only 
when it is unified by a unity in aim. At first 
glance, the usual statement of the corps — 
"Our aim is to educate the children, to make 
good citizens of them, to fit them to be useful 
members of society" — seems to indicate a 
singleness of aim on the part of teachers, 
principals and superintendents that is encour- 
aging. An interpretation of this statement 
shows great diversity of opinion as to its 
meaning. The aim settles down to the carry- 
ing out of the course of study. As the super- 
intendent makes the course, the end secured 
is satisfactory in the degree in which it harmo- 
nizes with the superintendent's ideal as pro- 
jected in the outline. The unity of aim in the 
three parts of the teaching corps lacks the 



24 Isolation in the School 

essential of unity in origin. The more the 
aim is defined by the superintendent or the 
principal, the less unity will characterize it in 
the teaching force. 

Two objections will be urged against the 
implication that all should be active, not only 
in realizing, but in setting, the aim of the 
school, (i) The school cannot have so many 
different aims as there are teachers connected 
with it. If active participation in originat- 
ing and cooperating means diversity, then 
this objection is well grounded. (2) Teachers 
are satisfied with the present method. The 
relations are pleasant in the system. No one 
feels downtrodden. Consideration must be 
shown ; teachers are too busy to have the duty 
of assisting in planning the course of study 
added to their labors. Anyway, they have no 
ideals to set up. 

The problems connected with the develop- 
ment of the individuality of the teacher, and 
the unification of the aim in the large schools 
in the cities, were early presented to the minds 
of some in charge of systems of schools. 
Various solutions have been suggested. Often 
the solutions suggested have reminded one of 
that presented by children in some classes in 
arithmetic, in which they begin to work for 
the answer before all the conditions have been 



Isolation in the School 2 5 

considered. One reason why the work in ele- 
mentary schools has so much dead sameness 
was brought out some years ago by Super- 
intendent E. E. White, of Cincinnati. The 
extract is long, but it presents none too fully 
conditions which still obtain in many schools : 

"Another problem in graded-school manage- 
ment touches the freedom of the teacher, and 
may be thus stated : How to subject a corps of 
teachers to efficient supervision and not reduce 
them to operatives. 

"The adoption of a definite course of study, 
with subdivisions corresponding to the number 
of classes, all following each other in natural 
order, necessitates the mastery of each of the 
successive portions as a preparation for the next 
higher. When the pupils in the lower grades 
or classes are sufficiently numerous to occupy 
several schoolrooms under different teachers, 
the progress of attainments of the several sec- 
tions of each grade or class must be suffi- 
ciently uniform to enable them to come to- 
gether in the upper grades or classes. This 
necessitates a degree of uniformity of instruc- 
tion, and it is just here that the mechanism of 
the graded system touches its very life, as the 
experience of too many of the larger cities 
plainly shows. To secure this uniformity of 
instruction the course is mapped out in minute 



26 Isolation in the School 

details, and the time to be devoted to each 
part, the order in which the steps are to be 
taken, and even the methods of teaching, are 
definitely and authoritatively prescribed. As 
a result the teacher is not free to teach accord- 
ing to his 'conscience and power,' but his high 
office is degraded to the grinding of prescribed 
grists, in prescribed quantities, and with pre- 
scribed fineness — to the turning of the crank 
of a revolving mechanism." 

A large majority of the teachers in every 
city system are its own graduates. It neces- 
sitates a period of five years only, after the 
establishment of a secondary and a normal 
school, for a system to begin recruiting its 
teaching force from those who have never 
known any other method of education than 
the one in that particular system. The intro- 
duction of teachers from the village and coun- 
try schools does not advance the standard, as 
they carry with them neither better scholarship 
nor greater breadth of experience than that 
in the corps. The normal schools have 
exalted method above culture, and so their 
graduates have been under the sway of the 
uniform normal method. The spirit of conse- 
cration to the work has been a distinguishing 
characteristic of their graduates. Had the 
ideal of the work contained more of a "definite, 



Isolation in the School 27 

coherent heterogeneity," the normal school 
would have conquered the elementary-school 
world. 

Naturally there was evolved an extensive 
"business of supervision," because of the effort 
to have uniformity in teachers and methods ; 
because of the introduction of subjects which, 
though not familiar to those trained within the 
public school, the social life outside of the 
school made a necessary part of the curricu- 
lum ; because of the desire of the strong 
administrative character to guide others rather 
than to be in the treadmill. In course of time 
the man at the top began realizing that the 
specialists and assistants in the work of super- 
vision were trespassing upon his prerogatives. 
In one city the superintendent maintained that 
there was a tendency to excessive supervision, 
and therefore that no title conferred on any 
other member of the teaching corps should 
include the term "superintendent," no matter 
how modified. That city had supervisors of 
many subjects and supervising principals, thus 
indicating that the attention of the chief was 
centered on the form side of the organization ; 
that the fundamental cause of his difficulties 
had not come to the surface with sufficient dis- 
tinctness for him to observe it. 

Superintendent W. H. Maxwell, of New 



28 Isolation in the School 

York city, when at the head of the public 
schools in Brooklyn, concentrated his attention 
upon the influence of the theory of supervis- 
ion, and presented at some length the objec- 
tions as they appeared to him : 

"Principals and heads of departments do not 
teach classes. They are supposed to spend 
their whole time in supervision. There is one 
supervisor who does not teach for every eleven 
classes. In my judgment the number of non- 
teaching supervisors is unnecessarily large. 
The excessive development of supervision has 
resulted in several clearly defined evils in our 
schools. 

"First, it has withdrawn from the work of 
class teaching many of our best teachers, and 
has thus lessened the efficiency of the teach- 
ing force as a whole. 

" Second, it has created the feeling that office 
work and making out examination questions 
are more honorable than the active work of 
teaching. If teachers are to have a due moral 
influence on their pupils, their office should be 
held in highest honor. 

"Third, the struggle for the prizes that are 
held up before the eyes of our teachers in the 
shape of head-of-department places, involving 
as they do, in most cases, considerably less 
work and considerably better pay, has resulted 



Isolation in the School 29 

in much unseemly wire-pulling and intrigue, 
an evil always to be deprecated in the admin- 
istration of a public-school system. 

"Fourth, the multiplication of superfluous 
heads of departments has resulted in division 
of responsibility in school management, in 
petty jealousy, and in much harmful inter- 
ference with the work of class teachers. 

"Fifth, the unnecessary increase in the num- 
ber of heads of departments has led to much 
of the excessive examination of pupils, with its 
attendant evils of cramming and nervous 
prostration, that, though now much less than in 
former years, still hurts our school work. 

"Sixth, the cost of this supervision, not 
merely in the salaries of heads of depart- 
ments, but in the fitting up of elaborate offices 
with expensive furniture, is withdrawing each 
year a vast amount of money that is sadly 
needed for necessary work and material. 

"A close estimate would show that not less 
that $30,000 per annum is expended on super- 
fluous heads of departments. Surely a better 
use might be found for this money. 

" From such facts as are here set forth it 
appears that in some places general supervis- 
ion has been carried to too great an extreme, 
and the only question that remains to be set- 
tled is where to draw the line." 



3° Isolation in the School 

These conclusions represent fairly the con- 
ditions existing in large systems into which 
have been introduced subjects under the care 
of special supervisors. Without criticising the 
superintendent who has fearlessly set forth the 
above facts, it becomes necessary to indicate 
the way in which some of the objectionable 
conditions originate in the general method of 
the system. The petty jealousy referred to 
in the fourth section, whether found in a sys- 
tem or in a single institution, is always evi- 
dence that the highest ranking officer is a person 
in power rather than a person of power. A 
chief executive devoid of petty jealousy, and 
refusing to use it as a spur for his subordi- 
nates, will find the possibilities of a solidarity 
among the members of the corps, or faculty, 
which does not exist in any other calling. 
Love of knowledge and faith in the future of 
humanity are in varying degrees peculiar to 
the minds that elect to teach the young. If 
the superior officer really consults with heads 
of departments in open meeting, they will rise 
from personal considerations to the question 
of relative values, and will appreciate the 
various claims as intelligently presented. If, 
however, authority of position dominates the 
discussions, or claims are presented and passed 
upon privately, petty jealousy will sorely per- 



Isolation in the School 3 1 

plex the head of the system, or school. The 
first, second, third, and fifth sections are dif- 
ferent views of the same topic — the strong 
tendency at the present time to get away from 
the active work of teaching children. Some 
of the causes of this condition will be discussed 
later. The sixth section suggests rivalry as 
to creature comforts and display all along the 
entire line, and is a natural outcome of the 
withdrawal from the duties of direct teach- 
ing. 

When the teachers in a single school sys- 
tem are numbered by thousands, and the terri- 
tory occupied covers many square miles, it is 
not strange that the size of the army and the 
spaces between its posts attract more atten- 
tion than the observance, or non-observance, 
of those delicate laws which make for soul- 
development in that great social body. Upon 
a cursory survey of the situation it is natural 
to conclude that it is impossible to recognize 
for all teachers the ethical law of change for 
intelligent and responsible beings. This con- 
clusion, though seemingly of great weight, is 
valueless. In the first place, the laws govern- 
ing the development of the soul are not 
subject to conditions arising in a crudely de- 
veloped social organization. The laws may be 
ignored, and the organization may continue, 



3 2 Isolation in the School 

but at a sacrifice beyond estimation. Daily- 
one sees teachers trying to hold a class to 
some statement in the text-book that is with- 
out content for the pupils, or to a chain of 
reasoning that is but a form to them, and then, 
after creating conditions foreign to those un- 
der which thought plays freely, say with much 
fervor: "Think! Think! You must think. 
Why don't you think?" How much differ- 
ence is there between this method of the 
teachers and that of principals and superin- 
tendents who announce their conclusions in 
theory and their ideals in practice, and then 
say to the teachers, " Take these thoughts of 
mine and be original in using them"? With 
the stress, the motion, the change, originated 
always in one part of the organization, and 
then conveyed to the other in mandatory form, 
a peculiar reactionary movement has set in. 
There are few spots where this reactionary 
movement has such strength that the teachers 
aim to restrict the function of the school prin- 
cipal to sitting in the office ; scolding the tardy, 
the indolent, and the turbulent ; calming the 
angry parents ; keeping the records ; examin- 
ing written work ; and filling out blanks and 
orders for school supplies. Such is the irony 
of fate that what has been treated as a subordi- 
nate part, there claims to be the only part that 



Isolation in the School 33 

functions for the true end of the school. It is 
the only part that deals directly and constantly 
with the pupils ; the only part that teaches ; 
or, in its own phraseology, "the only part that 
works." 

In cities where the teaching corps has become 
aroused to the evils ensuing from a differenti- 
ation that means isolation, there are greater 
possibilities of a healthful readjustment in the 
organization than in those where the tension 
is not definitely recognized, for the members 
are reaching that point of view from which 
they see that it is not liberty in carrying out, 
it is freedom and responsibility in origination 
also, that will make the whole corps a force, a 
power in itself. To predicate freedom for 
teachers in the superintendent's position, or 
for teachers in the principal's or the supervi- 
sor's position, is not sufficient to establish free- 
dom as an essential ; it must be predicated for 
all teachers. To prove that some cannot teach 
unless they possess freedom is not enough ; it 
must be predicated that freedom belongs to 
that form of activity which characterizes the 
teacher. The schools will be purged of the 
uncultured, non-progressive element, the fet- 
ters that bind the thoughtful and progressive 
will be stricken off, when the work is based on 
an intelligent understanding of the truth that 



34 Isolation in the School 

freedom is an essential of that form of activity- 
known as the teacher. 

To formulate a theory for that rational con- 
duct which shall necessitate an interaction be- 
tween the various parts of the school, and an 
interplay of thought between the members of 
each part, is not a difficult task ; but when the 
great body of pupils and students is brought 
into the foreground, the practical problem 
seems too intricate to admit of comprehension 
under any theoretical statement. That the 
same laws are active in the early and late 
stages of the development of personality is the 
fundamental upon which the theory and prac- 
tice of education must be constructed. The 
inherited customs which transfigured the 
teacher, upon entering the class room, into 
a superior being, omnipotent and all-wise, 
though abandoned by the understanding, are 
still active in the practical situation. The 
conserving influence of forms has been no- 
where more marked than in the intercourse 
between the teacher and the pupils. The old- 
time attitude of subserviency, or respect as it 
was then termed, which the New England 
child was wont to assume in the presence of 
the dominie is referred to smilingly in the 
history recitation ; and yet many years elapsed 
after the smile had begun, before there dawned 



Isolation in the School 35 

upon the educational horizon the recognition 
of that social equality which with its customs 
had long marked the intercourse of the pro- 
fessor and the student, the teacher and the 
pupil, when outside of the precincts. This 
single instance of the slow progress of the 
school in discerning the spirit of those refining 
movements in the social world which make 
for a considerate, gracious personality may 
help to the formation of a faint conception of 
the retarding influences, which will delay long 
in the school the application of those laws 
which permeate the higher forms of social 
organization and conventions. 

If mind develops in proportion to the degree 
in which it operates in accord with its inher- 
ent tendency to investigate and apply the re- 
sults of investigation, then is the conception 
of education which isolates the pupil from in- 
vestigation, which should be the basis of ap- 
plication, most faulty. Some years ago the 
Forum published a series of articles entitled 
" How I was Educated." The writers were 
college presidents and well-known literary 
men. In only one case was commendatory 
reference made to the school life below the 
academy. Those dreary years of so-called 
discipline, destitute of opportunity for activity 
in accordance with the mental bias, lacking 



3 6 Isolation in the School 

the stimulus of cooperative work which makes 
the pupil an organic part of the school, had 
developed the view which is common to many 
who have enjoyed the higher education, 
namely, that the elementary training has no 
intrinsic value. The theory of elementary 
education has been greatly modified since the 
boyhood days of those men. We still halt, 
however, on the threshold of that world in 
which each member would be a co-partner in 
its activities. 

As the universities bid fair to become the 
source from which the teaching corps will 
come largely, the question of its method, of 
its perpetuation of the influence of isolation, 
of the degree to which it recognizes the prin- 
ciples underlying that complicated mechanism, 
civil society, of its manner of presentation and 
investigation of subject-matter, is a vital one. 
Does it adopt the kindergarten method, or the 
high-school method ? Does it perpetuate the 
method of the university of the Renaissance, 
or does it seek to objectify the method which 
experience and science have demonstrated to 
be based on the modern movement ? The 
separation of the interests of the student from 
the life of the world outside attracted attention 
some years ago, and in course of time it 
was not uncommon to hear it stated that the 



Isolation in the School 37 

kindergarten method should obtain in the 
universities. As the kindergartner isolates 
the kindergarten field from the adjoining one, 
loses interest in education which has passed 
the paper-folding and pasting stage, the in- 
quiry as to what the statement meant is ger- 
mane to the subject under consideration. It 
must have meant that the universities, realiz- 
ing the flaw in their great inheritance which 
tends to isolate them from the concrete life 
of the race, would adopt the method which 
would guarantee to all within their walls the 
exercise of the inherent right to the initiative 
in thought and action ; and this they under- 
stand to be the kindergarten method. 

The school does not stand unsupported, un- 
recognized, in the community or the state. 
Upon a cursory view of the relation existing 
between these organizations, there appear for 
the school two aims which are in apparent con- 
flict. Its avowed object is the training of the 
individuals intrusted to its care and direction. 
The higher, the more nearly perfect, that 
training, the deeper the recognition of the 
right, and the more pronounced the effort to 
make valid the right of each soul to a develop- 
ment of the inborn power of self-determina- 
tion. On the other hand, as an institution of 
society, it must have for its object the direct 



38 Isolation in the School 

contribution of elements of strength to that 
organization of which it is a component part. 
Those elements must be the individuals that it 
helps attain higher degrees of self-determi- 
nation. These two aims are not in opposition ; 
they are the two phases of the same unity. 
Neither can be seen in its entirety without a 
recognition of the other. 

With the school closely bound by the reason 
for its existence, to the social world, the logi- 
cal inference of that relationship would be that 
in the content of its course of study and the 
method of its treatment, the life on the outside 
would be typified. Instead of this, much of 
the course of study is effete matter, which was 
long ago rejected as having been made useless 
by modern thought and invention ; and many 
of the methods of manipulation and applica- 
tion of subject-matter have been rejected by 
the busy workers outside as cumbersome and 
needlessly wearisome. 

The results of isolation from the life that 
now is may be seen in the kindergarten, which 
in its inception made a marked advance by the 
introduction of the social occupations of every- 
day life into the material of the school. But 
by the insistence upon the continuation in 
every country of those forms of activity which 
were effective in Germany half a century ago, 



Isolation in the School 39 

the kindergarten stands isolated with the tra- 
dition that has no culture or experiential 
value. 

In the changes in the course of study in the 
elementary schools is given a striking illustra- 
tion of a great social institution upon which 
depended the progress of the people, held 
back and finally criticised and minimized be- 
cause its leaders persisted through many years 
in treating existing conditions as fixed, deter- 
mined, and new conditions as hostile to the 
true idea of universal education. As special 
schools of instruction or technology demon- 
strated the value of material not included in, 
or modes of procedure foreign to, the old, the 
new was taken on as additional, not vital. The 
increase in the demands upon teachers in prep- 
aration for teaching many subjects not re- 
lated, and in examining papers to make certain 
that no incidentals had escaped the memories 
of their pupils, developed a high degree of 
drudgery throughout. This subjection to 
drudgery was compensated for by the intro- 
duction of the terms "faithful" and "con- 
scientious" as applicable to those who devoted 
themselves to perfecting the dull routine. 
What was the influence of this magnification 
of drudgery upon the personnel of the teaching 
corps ? This question brings forward the sub- 



4° Isolation in the School 

ject of the remarkable decrease in the number 
of men teachers, and corresponding increase 
in the number of women teachers, in city ele- 
mentary schools. Undoubtedly many causes 
operated to produce the change, but this was 
the most potent in affecting the personnel of 
both the number and type. 

In a course of lectures on The Development 
of Reflective Thought, Professor George H. 
Mead gives an historical setting to this subject 
of drudgery in method : " In the ancient world 
the workman wrought under dictation as to 
method. Freeman and slave sat side by side, 
using the tools as custom of religion dictated. 
The great change begun in the mediaeval period 
consisted in man's becoming free as to 
method. As industrial conditions expanded 
and competition made necessary progress in 
invention and advance in the manner of pro- 
duction, the first requisite of success was in- 
dividual freedom for the worker in his method. 
From that assertion of the individual as to his 
method, the idea that he owned his spirit, him- 
self, gradually developed into a new concep- 
tion of freedom, a conception of the natural 
rights of man." Woman is far behind man in 
this conception as applied to woman, and in 
so far as she is deficient in a conception of 
the inherent right of a soul to its right to in- 



Isolation in the School 4 1 

dividuality in method of expression in work 
done under supervision, in that degree is she 
more easily subordinated to carrying out direc- 
tions involving method. The Civil War di- 
verted some men from the schools, though 
before that there were city systems in which 
not a man taught in elementary schools in a 
position below that of principal ; the possi- 
bilities of financial success in the professions 
of law and medicine, as well as in mercantile 
life, have tended to draw men away from the 
elementary schoolroom ; yet these influences 
have not been more potent in keeping men 
out of the schools than have the mechanism, 
drudgery, and loss of individuality which the 
method of organization and administration has 
tended to make characteristic of the graded 
school. 

Although natural gifts, the equality of the 
sexes in many American homes, a strong indi- 
viduality, the pursuance of intellectual work 
outside of the school, all combined to keep a 
large percentage of women teachers and prin- 
cipals free, yet a number large enough to be 
conspicuous has never attained that conception 
of freedom which makes demands upon the 
powers of origination in each individual. It is 
these undeveloped teachers, principals, and 
members of the supervising force who exercise 



4 2 Isolation in the School 

the right of dictation of method thus elevating 
it far above material, who constitute the non- 
progressive section of the teaching force in the 
city school systems. It is this non-progressive 
element which fills the places into which many 
desirable young men and women refuse to 
enter. With the broader education of woman 
and the opening of other fields to her, she is 
attaining a conception of freedom as to method; 
a conception of the natural rights of the soul ; 
and so we find the young woman of parts from 
the high school, the college, or the university 
unwilling to enter upon the life of the elemen- 
tary school teacher. The young men who look 
toward the schools wish to undertake some new 
line of work, not of instruction, but of investi- 
gation ; to measure and weigh the little ones 
with machines. The young women of parts 
wish to be special teachers — to teach the teach- 
ers, not the children. So closely associated with 
drudgery is the ideal of teaching the young, 
that trained minds and cultivated personalities 
shrink from entrance into the direct work. 

The stress of conditions has become so 
great both within and without the precincts 
that relief must come soon. The active cause 
of this problematic condition has not come to 
the surface. The isolation between the theory 
of the school and the theory of life is so great 



Isolation in the School 43 

that the general consensus of opinion advocates 
the retention in the school of subject-matter 
and forms of work which it will not tolerate 
in the commercial world or home. So foreign 
is the school life to the interests of the parents 
that they rarely enter its doors on other than 
gala days. And yet the large numbers that 
throng its halls on those days evidence the 
tendency in human nature to cooperate in mak- 
ing the life of the young a unity, in which the 
school and the home shall be interactive. 

The difference in origin, subject-matter, and 
aim of the course of study in the public high 
school and the private preparatory school was 
brought out very distinctly by Dr. William T. 
Harris, Commissioner of Education, in a paper 
on "Secondary School Studies": "There is 
no doubt that the high-school course laid out 
by the school committees is more rational than 
the secondary course of the private preparatory 
schools prescribed for them by the colleges. 
And yet the college course was the conscious 
product of the highest educated minds of the 
community. The unconscious evolution by 
'natural selection' in the minds of school 
committees elected by the people was wiser, 
on the whole. Individual members of city 
school boards are always found who oppose 
classical studies altogether. But the pressure 



44 Isolation in the School 

of popular demand always prevails to secure 
in the public schools what is needed." 

With the early introduction of specialization 
in student life, it is impossible to place the 
college in its present relation to the social 
world. Such new forms and subjects of inves- 
tigation have been taken up that society seems 
the subject-matter of the higher schools. 
Whether Mr. Bosanquet's prediction to the 
effect that the distinguishing characteristic of 
our times will be the "dimming of the time- 
honored belief in the virtues of the poor " will 
prove true is a question that cannot now be 
settled. But that mere statement by such a 
student of social conditions arouses the mind 
to investigate and determine whether the old 
form of separation that so long dominated the 
universities is still effective in the new field, or 
whether there be a new construction active in 
defining society and the laws underlying it. 

Isolation in any social organization means 
more than separation in space. It means 
deprivation of the exercise of inherent powers, 
both originative and constructive — negation. 
Cooperation means more than spontaneity in 
following another's lead ; evolution of potential 
powers through a reaction, initiated by the self 
and terminating in creative intelligence, is 
always involved in its operation. 



II. 

SOME RECENT CONSTRUCTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGIC, 
ETHIC, AND LOGICAL MODES THAT MUST BE 
RECOGNIZED IN A RATIONAL CONDUCT OF 
THE SCHOOL. 

The psychologist of today is laying stress 
on modes of action that received little atten- 
tion from the student of mental science in the 
past. That almost total neglect was some- 
what remarkable, for the reason that the non- 
scientific of high and low grade of culture 
recognized them and held definite opinions re- 
garding their signification. The value of those 
opinions is enhanced in our estimation by the 
fact that the old terminology is in the main 
retained by the scientific investigators, who 
are gathering and organizing data as to the 
origin and function of imitation, habit, and at- 
tention ; and, in so doing, are not only modi- 
fying and enlarging popular theory as to these 
modes of action, but are also constructing 
scientific theory. 

One of the earliest and fullest studies of 
imitation was made by Aristotle in The Poetic. 
In that work he bases his theory of the drama 
and kindred arts on imitation. The school of 



46 Isolation in the School 

modern artists and litterateurs which regards 
the function of art to be the exact reproduc- 
tion of the model is small, though the number 
of persons who accept the two causes of imi- 
tation as given by Aristotle is very large. 
Even when the psychologist began to look 
upon this activity as one which fell within his 
province, he accepted the delight of man in 
imitation, and his enjoyment of successful 
imitations, as sufficient explanation of its 
origin or cause. 

Certain modifications were noted as affect- 
ing the degree to which the attempt to copy 
is carried ; as, for example, an energetic child 
is said to be more imitative than is a lethargic 
child, though the question as to the ratio of 
imitated acts to the whole activity in the dif- 
ferent classes was neither raised nor answered. 
The influence of environment on these two 
types of children was not considered, though 
it would have furnished suggestive material as 
to the causes of the types. Another factor 
which was taken into account was the emo- 
tional temperament which had very early at- 
tracted the attention of the student of abnor- 
mal tendencies. The tendency of the less 
independent and the non-assertive child to 
copy unconsciously the absurdities of others, 
and the general use of mimicry as a means of 



Isolation in the School 47 

ridicule, have been the cause of the unex- 
pressed opinion that the imitator takes the ob- 
jectionable for a model. Aristotle treats this 
from a somewhat different standpoint. He 
says, since imitators imitate, then it necessarily 
follows that they imitate those who are better 
than, or worse than, or like unto, themselves, 
and urges the presentation of the best possible 
as model for the imitator. Had he been 
writing in the present analytic age, he would 
have suggested the probability that the copy 
taken indicated the moral motif of the imi- 
tator. 

The most important outcome of these 
various popular studies was the setting up of 
an antithesis with originality and invention on 
one side, and imitation on the other. This 
antithesis has long been, and still is, the basis 
of popular educational theory, which would 
devote the years of elementary training of 
children to the making of careful reproduc- 
tions of the copy set by the teacher, and then 
would advance to higher forms of intellectual 
work, forms requiring power in individual 
origination and invention, those who had suf- 
ficient strength to rise above the influence of 
the practice of the theory under which they 
had been trained. 

Very different is the method of approach 



4 8 Isolation in the School 

to this subject made by Baldwin in Mental 
Development. Making use of investigations of 
the biologists he says : " The effect of imita- 
tion is to make the brain a ' repeating organ,' 
i. e. y to secure the repetitions which on all 
biological theories the organ must have if it is 
to develop;" and from this he brings out the 
point that "a child under limitations of 
heredity makes up its personality by imita- 
tion, out of the copy set in the actions, tem- 
pers, emotions, of the persons who build 
around him the social inclosure of his child- 
hood." Here is met the question about the 
influence of environment in imitation which 
was so completely ignored by the earlier in- 
vestigators. 

Satisfactory as is the recognition of this 
factor, one cannot help wishing that the anal- 
ysis had gone deeper so that the spontaneous 
activity at the beginning of the process would 
have been brought out more clearly. The 
treatment of stimulation is such that, inferen- 
tially, imitation begins with a reaction on the 
stimulus in the environment, rather than in 
the original impulse which selects and then 
reacts. The summary of the results of neu- 
rological research brings out very distinctly 
this point of origin : " Wherever there is life 
there is spontaneous selection of stimuli and 



Isolation in the School 49 

the motor adaptations necessary to it." This 
is in the section on Organic Imitation; but in 
the section on "How to Observe Children's 
Imitations" the uncertainty of origin again 
becomes evident. There is a return to that 
form of speech which, like Spencer's, makes 
the environment an all-powerful influence, and 
seems to forget the persisting traits in the 
individual which are the basis of native reac- 
tions. He says "In Leibnitz's phrase, the boy 
or girl is a social monad, a little world, which 
reflects the whole system of influences, com- 
ing to stir its sensibility," and then emphasizes 
it by adding: "Just in so far as his sensibil- 
ities are stirred he imitates." 

All of this, however does not minimize the 
value of his study in demonstrating the truth 
that there is no antithesis between originality 
and imitation, but that invention is an out- 
growth of imitation. Three elements are in- 
volved in the development of the original out 
of the imitative : "the new ways" in which one 
imitates ; "the combinations he hits upon" 
when imitating freely ; "the growth of self" 
through the consciousness of power discovered 
in varying the copy. To come more definitely 
at the gain accruing from this recent analysis 
of imitation and its development into inven- 
tion, there must be borne in mind the general 



5° Isolation in the School 

attitude toward this mode of action. The 
question of imitation was viewed largely as 
one of temperament and will, hence, if a good 
copy was set, then the more closely it was 
imitated, the nearer the result approached the 
desired aim, and the better the worker as an 
imitator. The independent, self-assertive per- 
son did not imitate anything or anybody. This 
division into imitators and non-imitators ig- 
nored the elements involved in the evolution 
of originality and inventive power. The inde- 
pendent individual, it was assumed, did noth- 
ing which he saw others doing. Hence it was 
as necessary for him to deny imitation as it was 
to claim invention. The transfiguring power 
of the self and the dependence of the individ- 
ual upon others were lost to view. The modern 
psychologist has thus shown the growth of 
mental power, even in so primary an activity 
as imitation, to depend upon the modification 
which the mind of the imitator originates. 

Instead of striving to develop mind in a field 
isolated from that which would furnish op- 
portunity for the native mental powers to exer- 
cise their natural sphere, the latest formulation 
of thought would make it the right of the 
opening mind to an environment which not 
only furnishes the better standards for imita- 
tion, but also affords opportunity for free play 



Isolation in the School 5 1 

to that tendency to give the individual touch to 
the product. This will work disaster to the 
idea that a new method must be devised for 
doing all things when the transition is made 
from the lower school to the higher, or to the 
world outside. Greater than that, it will 
recognize the individuality which is embodied 
in the developing personality ; it will recog- 
nize that something which, if it have an oppor- 
tunity to expand, makes each soul conscious 
of its kinship with the eternal. 

With the appearance of Dr. William B. Car- 
penter's work on Mental Physiology, in 1874, 
there was given a setting to the relation be- 
tween mind and body which, he hoped, would 
stimulate some other investigator to develop 
"that science of human nature which has yet 
to be built-up on a much broader basis than 
any philosopher has hitherto taken as his 
foundation." In a most valuable chapter on 
habit he opened the subject by calling atten- 
tion to the well-known laws underlying the 
construction and rejuvenation of the vegetable 
and animal organism in the process of nutrition. 
Probably no reader of that succinct statement 
found in it anything which was before un- 
known ; and yet, after the application of those 
familiar facts and principles to the activity of 
the nervous system of man, a new point of view 



5 2 Isolation in the School 

was held from which to consider habit in the 
mental life, and particularly in the formative 
period of childhood and youth. 

Within the last quarter of a century the sub- 
ject has been discussed by English, French, 
German, and American writers, from the same 
standpoint as that taken by Dr. Carpenter. 
From the position that repetition makes modes 
of action easier, and often automatic, there 
was an advance step made when the scientist 
raised the question : Why does the nerve 
current traverse a certain path the first time ? 
The answers first offered were not satisfactory. 
The failure lay in the attempt to base the 
explanation on a conception that limited 
habit to a purely physiological basis. James 
raises the question in his well-known chapter 
on "Habit" and concludes his answer with 
the following comment : "All this is vague to 
the last degree, and amounts to little more 
than saying that a new path may be formed by 
the sort of chances that in nervous material are 
likely to occur. But vague as it is, it is really 
the last word of our wisdom in the matter." 
The question raised did not interest his readers 
to any great extent. The chapter contained 
enough that was definite. Like Dr. Carpenter, 
after presenting the subject from the physio- 
logical side, he uses all the force of that pres- 



Isolation in tne School 53 

entation to arouse his readers to the ethical 
nature of the habitual mode of activity. The 
necessity for establishing automatism in control 
of the petty details and the daily duties of life 
is painted in vivid colors. The chapters writ- 
ten by these two brilliant men are decided 
contributions to psychological and ethical 
theory ; and yet, in neither does the writer 
rise to that command of the subject which 
shows that the initiative and the habit, the 
cause that makes the nerve-current traverse 
a certain path the first time and the repetition 
of the act, are the two aspects of a unity. The 
common failure of long-continued dictated 
repetition to set up a habit, gave no light in 
regard to this process. Dr. Carpenter speaks 
of "the strength of the organic tendency which 
produces the persistence," just missing the ex- 
planation of the point involved, the origin of 
the organic tendency. The investigations of 
biology have been pushed a step be}'ond the 
advance position attained by Dr. Carpenter 
when he concluded that "there was strong rea- 
son for attributing inherent motility to some 
kinds of muscular tissue," to the position which 
makes that inherent motility, that tendency to 
movement for the maintenance of life, a char- 
acteristic of life. To the non-scientific mind 
this statement of that which in the light of to- 



54 Isolation in the School 

day is involved in the conclusions of the 
scientist of yesterday seems a mere play upon 
words. It is, however, in restatements of 
truths with a transfer of emphasis that new 
meanings are given the old, and the doors to 
the worlds of nature and of thought are 
opened wider, giving to humanity a broader 
view of the structure and mechanism of the 
universe. 

Following some principles of current bio- 
logy and psychology to their logical outcome, 
Baldwin in Me?ital Development has taken up 
the question, " What made the current 
traverse the path the first time?" and has 
worked out a very definite, not vague, answer : 
11 Habit expresses the tendency of the organ- 
ism to secure and to retain its vital stim- 
ulations. On this view, a habit begins before 
the movement which illustrates it actually 
takes place ; the organism is endowed with a 
habit, if that be not considered a contradiction. 
Its life-process involves just the tendency 
which habit goes on to confirm and to extend. 
The process of habit, having as its end the 
maintenance of a condition of stimulation, is 
set in train by the initial stimulus. And the 
discharge of it in the path which again 'hits' 
the stimulus is the function of this stimulus 
rather than another, and reflects, exactly and 



Isolation in the School 55 

alone, the fact that then and there is a stimu- 
lus whose influence upon the vital processes is 
good." Here we have a rational explanation 
of the conditions underlying the formation of 
habits. Not by chance, not by the imposition 
of an external command, does the first move- 
ment along the nerve structure take this or 
that direction. Here we find an explanation 
of the frequent failure to make a mode of 
action habitual by repetition. 

The same criticism which was made on a 
lapse into uncertainty regarding the beginnings 
of imitation applies to the study of habit, in 
Social and Ethical I?iterpretatio?is in Mental De- 
velopment, especially in the discussion of the 
moral sense. If "we do right by habitually 
imitating a larger self whose injunctions run 
counter to the tendencies of our partial selves," 
then is there a begging of the analogy between 
the development of the organism as taught by 
biology, and the development of mind as taught 
by psychology. It is hoped that upon making 
his next essay into the fields to which he has let 
down the bars, this versatile student of mental 
development will think the conclusions of 
his general statements into, and through, the 
particular activities to which they apply in 
education and ethics. And yet, in the main, 
he establishes the analogy from which we de- 



5 6 Isolation in the School 

duce the principle : whether it be largely 
physical or largely rrfental, the same law holds 
in regard to an individual mode of action be- 
coming habitual ; within the being — the indi- 
vidual — must originate the tendency to ac- 
quire control, to make automatic the easy car- 
riage, the clean-cut enunciation, the gentle 
manner, the careful observation, the accurate 
statement, the magnanimous judgment. The 
habit unconsciously acquired is often to its 
possessor (if he would know himself), or to the 
intelligent observer, an indication — sometimes 
a revelation — of hitherto undreamed-of po- 
tentiality ; its antagonist, the habit which will 
not form, is equally valuable as a revealer of 
conditions. The recognition of the origin of 
habit in the tendency leads to the construction 
of a new conception of the method of change 
of habit. The idea that objectionable habits 
are to be "broken " develops into a new one, 
that the individual trait which persists, to- 
gether with control gained by exercise of the 
old habit, must be reorganized for the attain- 
ment of the new end, set by the individual. 
This new conception, instead of presenting de- 
struction as the outcome of reformation, 
strengthens the self-respect by the require- 
ment to search for the elements of power, and 
then utilize them in the new mode. The dull 



Isolation in the School 57 



routine of trying to form habits by wearisome 
repetitions, the discouraging process of trying 
to overcome the enemy, the old habit, only to 
find it upon the first lapse of vigilance rein- 
stated in full sway, must give way to a higher 
type of activity. The individual must, under 
the stimulus of interest in a consciously orig- 
inated and defined end, utilize inherited and 
acquired tendencies and powers in organizing 
and reorganizing for its attainment. The sat- 
isfaction that comes with exercise along lines 
that are ^peculiar to the individual will be 
secured by everyone, in greater or less degree, 
through automatic action. But whether this 
shall reduce the life to a narrow mechanism 
that stifles and dwarfs, or shall expand the life 
into a developing process that inspires and en- 
larges, depends upon the origination and con- 
struction of the end or aim by which the tend- 
ency is called into action. 

A third subject on which there has been ex- 
cellent work done in modern psychology is 
attention. Parents and pedagogues have from 
time immemorial called upon the child with 
the wandering gaze or listless attitude to pay 
attention. The physical signs have been so 
easily interpreted that from those alone the in- 
attentive mind was detected. And yet the 
adult has often been amazed to find, at a later 



5 8 Isolation in the School 

period, that the amount retained by the seem- 
ingly attentive was little in comparison with 
that controlled by the inattentive. The Eng- 
lish school of psychology, from Locke down 
to Carpenter, did not think the subject a 
profitable one for investigation. The only ob- 
ject in referring to their failure to recognize 
this activity is to emphasize the prevalence and 
influence of their attitude at this late day. 

If the general consensus of opinion as to the 
relation between mind-wandering and attention 
were taken, it would be found to embody the 
idea that in trying to follow oral discourse the 
mind of the listener can often be kept from 
wandering by the mechanical repetition of the 
words of the speaker. Here, in a nutshell, is 
the perversity of the theory which often makes 
dullards of the young. What value is it to 
keep the mind from wandering if it is tethered 
to words, not intelligence ? The failure to 
distinguish sharply between the discriminating 
alertness of attention and the undistinguishing 
passivity of the mere repetition of words is 
due, probably, to the non-recognition of the 
activity of feeling, as well as of intellect, in 
the process of attention. This over-emphasiz- 
ing the function of the intellect, and ignoring 
that of feeling, must have taken its rise in the 
philosophy of the Stoics. The characteristics 



Isolation in the School 59 

of the ideal of attention it involves are isola- 
tion of the individual attending from the con- 
tent of that to which he attends. Placing the 
origin of the generally accepted theory of 
attention in that system of thought, we have 
an easy explanation of that attitude toward 
the process of attention which omits the feel- 
ing aspect. In the reaction against this gen- 
erally accepted idea of attention there have 
developed different modes of viewing the 
activity. Among the different theories ad- 
vanced is one which bases attention on in- 
terest. The keen observer of people uses 
various expressions in which attention and in- 
terest are associated. "They will not give 
attention because they have lost interest ;" 
"Because he cannot get them interested they 
will not attend ;" " It is evident that they are 
losing interest, for they are giving attention 
by fits and starts." These expressions raise 
the question whether interest is the base upon 
which attention rests, or is the emotional, or 
feeling, aspect of attention. Whether it be 
base or aspect, it certainly is not merely a fore- 
runner whose activity ceases when that of 
attention begins. In a recent article on "Re- 
flective Attention," 1 intrinsic interest is made 
the basis of spontaneous attention, and a 

x Dewey, in the Elementary School Record. 



60 Isolation in the School 

query or doubt the basis of voluntary or 
reflective attention. It is a new presenta- 
tion of the origin and process of this activity. 
The part of this article which specially con- 
cerns the study herein made is in regard 
to the origination of voluntary attention : 
" The problem is one's own ; hence also the 
impetus, the stimulus to attention, is one's 
own ; hence also the training secured is 
one's own — it is discipline, or gain in power 
of control." Here again is a process familiar 
to unscientific thought, stated on its func- 
tional side by science ; and that function 
is self-development, growth, not through the 
effort to achieve an end which was dictated by 
another, but through the effort to secure an 
end which the self has determined. 

In these three modes of activity which have 
been briefly reviewed, it is evident that in the 
most modern point of view regarding the de- 
velopment of the individual the first essential 
is the recognition of teleological aspect in 
every form of mental activity. In this recog- 
nition there is necessitated that play of the 
mental powers which is according to nature, 
and which, therefore, makes the individual 
attain to the highest degree of strength pos- 
sible for him. This free play of thought can- 
not go on if the individual is isolated from 



Isolation in the School 61 

the consideration of the ends for which his life 
is spent. A cooperation in determining the 
ends for which life is spent is necessary to the 
evolution of mind. 

James has expressed the theory of teleologi- 
cal functioning so well that I quote his re- 
marks at some length : 

"The reflex theory of the mind commits 
physiologists to regarding the mind as an 
essentially teleological mechanism. I mean 
by this that the conceiving or theorizing 
faculty — the mind's middle department — 
functions exclusively for the sake of ends that do 
not exist at all in the world of impressions we 
receive by way of our senses, but are set by 
our emotional and practical subjectivity alto- 
gether. It is a transformation of the world of 
our impressions into a totally different world, 
the world of our conception ; and the trans- 
formation is effected in the interests of our 
volitional nature, and for no other purpose 
whatever. . . . We easily delude ourselves 
about this middle stage. Sometimes we think 
it final, and sometimes we fail to see amid the 
monstrous diversity in the length and compli- 
cation of the cogitations which may fill it that 
it can have but one essential function — the 
function of defining the direction which our 
activity, immediate or remote, shall take." 



62 Isolation in the School 

'"Receiving impressions' to all eternity 
would never result in developing what we call 
1 mind.' The active response, the forthputting 
of the mind's own powers according to its own 
constitution, is the prominent and the really 
impressive thing for the psychologist." 

It is a commonplace that on each new step 
in the progress of humanity are found certain 
words which are ever afterward identified with 
the particular period in which they were 
brought forward. One of those characteristic 
terms in psychologic and ethic theory of today 
is activity. For a time we had the compound 
"self-activity," but the "self" has gradually 
been eliminated from this distinguishing word, 
which is used with varying degrees of loose- 
ness and definiteness. Mr. Bradley, in a chap- 
ter devoted to activity, lays stress upon the 
time-sequence involved, which, he very justly 
says, is necessary if the use of the term 
retains sense. " The element in its meaning, 
which comes to light at once, is succession 
and change. In all activity something clearly 
becomes something else." "Activity seems 
to be self-caused change. A transition that 
begins with and comes out of the thing itself 
is the process where we feel that it is activity. 
But the thing cannot act unless the act is 
occasioned; then the transition, so far, is 



Isolation in the School 63 

imported into it by something outside. If we 
look at the process as the coming out of its 
nature, the process is its activity." Although 
Mr. Bradley does not seem satisfied with this 
analysis of the term, yet it presents fairly or 
suggests the answer to the question : What is 
the nature of activity, a process which trans- 
figures a cause into something different ? 

So easily is a term formulated and its essen- 
tial principle so soon obscured that it seemed 
best at this point to call attention directly to 
this distinguishing idea of the present day, in 
order that the recognition of its vital element 
be assured. Dealing, as psychology does, 
with the mechanism by which we come to 
know the world in its material and spiritual 
aspects, it forms the basis of our knowledge of 
mind in its development. Its problems, how- 
ever, are less difficult than those of ethics ; 
the conditions of the first lie in the individual 
only, while those of the second underlie the 
relations of individuals. The adult, sustaining 
the relation of teacher or parent, in using his 
knowledge of psychology as an instrument in 
the process of the education of others, occu- 
pies an intermediate ground which might be 
called the ethico-psychological. Some ques- 
tions rising in that territory have been con- 
sidered generally in the discussion of the 



64 Isolation in the School 

term "activity." Further study will be made 
in the domain of social ethics only. 

The tenor of all that is here offered will be 
in accord with Thomas Hill Green's Prolegom- 
ena to Ethics, a book from which I have 
received much stimulus for thought on this 
subject. No attempt will be made to enter 
into a discussion of all questions that may be 
subsumed under this subject. Only three will 
be considered : the nature of a free cause in the 
intellectual and moral life ; the motives of 
change ; the relations between individuals 
engaged in setting and realizing a common 
aim. 

One of the benefits which must ensue ere 
long from the introduction of scientific method 
into the way which man approaches the prob- 
lems, not only in the physical world, but in 
the moral also, will be a removal of the chains 
which more or less closely bind him to a 
belief in fixed mechanism. As generally un- 
derstood, the relation of cause and effect, as 
applied to man, means that a uniformly ante- 
cedent event (or cause) determines a uniformly 
consequent event (or effect). This make him 
a mere link in a chain. Analysis shows that 
the manner of the origin of the cause deter- 
mines the vitality of the movement. If "the 
cause or motive is constituted by an act of 



Isolation in the School 65 

self-consciousness which is not a natural event, 

an act in which the agent presents to himself 

a certain idea of himself — of himself doing or 

himself enjoying — as an idea of which the 

realization forms for the time his good," the 

whole movement will be removed from the 

sphere of a fixed and narrow mechanism, the 

individual will not be a link in a chain, or a 

cog in a wheel. 

Though in the main we indorse Shakespeare's 

theory of the continuity of cause and effect in 

humanity — 

"There is a history in all men's lives 
Figuring the nature of the times deceased : 
The which observed, a man may prophesy 
With a near aim, of the main chance of things 
As yet not come to life, which in their seeds 
And weak beginnings lie intreasure'd. 
Such things become the hatch and brood of time." 

yet there is one possibility unexpressed by 
the poet, and that is the activity of the human 
being as a free cause. A new but potent " occa- 
sion" may be of so powerful a nature as to 
rouse in the resulting activity elements which 
were latent, and the actor may give to himself, 
and hence to his acts, a different and un- 
dreamed-of character. Now, this new trait in 
things not yet come to life comes, not from the 
man's or woman's cutting aloof from the " deter- 
mined world as a whole," but "from his acting 



66 Isolation in the School 

absolutely from himself in the action through 
which that world is." By and through the 
man's action as a "free cause" the character of 
those things which in their seeds lie intreas- 
ured, as well as the character of the man, is 
given a new determination. Not to effect the 
acts and the self is to be a mechanical cause. 
It seems hardly necessary to say that in the 
case where the man acts as a free cause not 
only is there a different quality of hatch and 
brood of time, but man himself is a different 
man. The dull routine that becomes a part 
of life when the human being is a cause not 
distingished from the determined world in 
which it acts, simply stifles the potentialities 
which lie dormant in that soul. Instead of 
being an organic part of the community of life 
to which the man should belong, he is isolated 
as a part of its mechanism. 

The motives underlying a change are closely 
interwoven with those of free cause and the 
setting of the common aim, but they may be 
profitably analyzed. There are three widely 
different motives, leading to a change in the 
mode of thought and its expression. Either 
one of these, acting alone, may apparently 
induce the same result that would follow from 
one of the others. The lowest of the three is 
that fear which denies to a soul the right to its 



Isolation in the School 67 

own ideals, and makes the self set up the ideals 
of another for realization. A second motive 
leading some to change their theory and prac- 
tice, is the love of novelty. The soul, having 
no ideals of its own to realize, lacks that 
guiding star which would draw it ever upward, 
and so looks now here, now there for a new 
object to pursue. It is not uncommon for 
lovers of novelty to attempt the most radical 
changes upon a few hours' notice. The third 
and highest motive inducing change in thought 
and action is that based on a conviction that the 
present is barren, and a better is attainable. 
The germs of progress are sown in this soil. 
The conception of a better may at first be 
dim, but it will become more and more clearly 
defined as the soul searches for that which it 
desires. 

Whether the result of a change shall be a 
copy, lacking permanent individual, vitalizing 
force ; or shall be an erratic offshoot, leading 
to nothing; or shall be an outward expression 
of a persistent, individual, developing ideal, 
depends upon the motivation of the change ; 
whether it be fear or subserviency, the love of 
novelty, or conviction and desire. The relapse 
from a seeming high plane of living and think- 
ing to a former low plane is the reaction from 
a change that was determined by one of the 



68 Isolation in the School 

lower forms of motives. The individual may 
inhibit tendencies and habits for a long time, 
but mere inhibition neither points the way nor 
leads to higher realms. It is unnecessary to 
appeal further to experience as regards the 
influence of the motive for change on the 
character of the result, and on the character 
of the individual. 

The next topic — the relation of individuals 
in setting a common aim — is a continuation 
of the question of cause and free cause. Char- 
acter and conduct stand to each other in the 
relation of the theory and practice of life. 
If they are divorced, that is, if the idea which 
is the motive of conduct is not a construction 
of the reason and feelings, is instead a photo- 
graphic reproduction of another's construction, 
the conduct which eventuates is not the second 
part of a unity, the expression of the origi- 
nating and constructing activity of the soul. 
The reproduction will serve as an occasion for 
action, but not for that action, that conduct, 
which is the objectification of " man's con- 
sciousness of himself as an end to himself." 
The conduct will not be an index of the ani- 
mating principle of the man. To lose sight of 
the necessary integration of the two is to lose 
sight of the process which makes for (or 
against) life itself. This process is essentially 



Isolation in the School 69 

the same for all, the weak as well as the 
strong. 

The " absolutely desirable " for man taken 
from its individual or particularistic setting 
becomes the universal called the good. The 
good has a dual character : as an ideal it is an 
impelling force, urging from within that it 
must realize itself; as a motive it is a drawing 
power, urging from without that spirit enter 
into and take possession of that to which it 
gave original determination. In this action, 
as an internal and as an external power, the 
end of the good is recognized by the will as a 
subjective construction and as an independent 
object. Or, to express it differently, the prac- 
tical activity of the idea has to deal with an 
object which it knows has not existence ; it 
likewise knows the determined end to be in 
the mind ; and the object to be something ex- 
ternal to the self. To the individuals making 
up a community in which for each the " abso- 
lutely desirable" is the character behind the 
conduct, the effort of each to better himself 
would make absolutely necessary a social life 
in which the life-process would have its fullest 
opportunity, for the ideal always tends to 
realize itself in action. An ideal is not, as is 
generally assumed, an ethereal something 
which has no connection with the practical 



7° Isolation in the School 

side of life. It is the ideal which is behind 
every act of the will, and which by its insist- 
ence upon realization gives color and tone to 
our whole mental life. 

On the other hand, to the individuals 
making up a community in which the " abso- 
lutely desirable " of an assertive man or woman 
is the animating spirit of the conduct of all, 
the social requirement would not be a neces- 
sity, for the life-process in character and con- 
duct would not exist ; the assertively selfish 
would be more selfish, the timidly weak would 
be made weaker. What is true of the influ- 
ence of that type of mind which revels in see- 
ing its aims set up as the aim of the members 
of a social community whose occupations dif- 
fer, and hence who have other stimuli of 
thought and action, is true in a much greater 
degree when the members belong to an organ- 
ization, working within prescribed limits. The 
stated, object of the organization, and the ac- 
ceptance of that statement, in a measure com- 
mits all the members to a common creed ; and 
in just so far as the many phrase their theories 
and beliefs as they have been phrased for 
them will there be a weakening of the indi- 
vidual effort to read new elements into the 
theory upon which they act. This does not 
necessitate an abandonment of the institutions 



Isolation in the School 7 1 

of society, neither does it imply a lack of 
personal freedom because of the institutions. 
It does, however, emphasize the need for con- 
ditions in all institutions and organizations 
which shall call into action the intellectual 
power, as well as the spontaneity of feeling, in 
every member, from the least responsible to 
the executive at the top. Neither egoism nor 
altruism is the principle which makes the life- 
process. The two are but the different phases 
which, combined, make for that order of 
society which strengthens both the weak and 
the strong. As John Stuart Mill expresses it : 
"The very corner stone of an education in- 
tended to form great minds must be the recog- 
nition of the principle that the object is to call 
forth the greatest possible quantity of intel- 
lectual power, and to inspire the intensest love 
of truth; and this without a particle of regard 
to the results to which the exercise of that 
power may lead, even though it should con- 
duct the pupil to opinions diametrically op- 
posite to those of his teachers. We say this, 
not because we think opinions unimportant, 
but because of the immense importance which 
we attach to them ; for in proportion to the de- 
gree of intellectual power and love of truth 
which we succeed in creating is the certainty 
that (whatever may happen in any one partic- 



7 2 Isolation in the School 

ular instance) in the aggregate of instances 
true opinions will be the result ; and intellec- 
tual power and practical love of truth are alike 
impossible where the reasoner is shown his 
conclusions and informed beforehand that he 
is expected to arrive at them." It is necessary 
to keep in view this element of intellectual 
activity because of the generally accepted idea 
of morality, and of obedience to its established 
laws or rules, which are often merely specific 
directions. It is the independent play of the 
intellect (the logical process) which makes 
order a necessity in what sometimes seems like 
a world of chaos ; and yet to the great major- 
ity the terms " free activity," " freedom," 
imply anarchy. The discussion of these terms 
will be carried on many years before they will 
be understood in their true significance. It is 
with " freedom" as with the " state of nature," 
which was long a favorite term with writers on 
political topics. Neither, correctly inter- 
preted, means that humanity has only to be 
removed from the restrictions of social organ- 
izations to become perfect. 

Each recognizes the potentialities of the 
soul, and the tendency toward orderliness 
which persists in its general movement ; each 
has in view the possibility of freedom — a 
higher type of self-control than has yet been 



Isolation in the School 73 

seen in any civil community. True freedom 
regards the social law as something which, 
permeating the whole social fabric, lays upon 
each member obligations to high thinking and 
right living, and also guarantees the exercise 
of the individual's right to determine himself. 
The divine law is the universal toward which 
freedom tends. The aim and end of educa- 
tion should be the development of intellectual 
power that makes for order, not through skep- 
ticism and anarchy, but through faith and 
freedom according to the law of being. 

In reviewing the attitude of modern thought 
toward the subject of activity, we must make 
one venture into the domain of logic. From 
the formulation of the doctrine of the syllo- 
gism by Aristotle until the early part of the 
present century, a scientific statement, a judg- 
ment, was not considered fully established un- 
less it could be proved that it conformed to 
the syllogistic process. At the present day 
the syllogism is not held in high repute. 
Modern logic is presented as a study of the 
way in which mind reasons, infers, judges, ab- 
stracts, and generalizes ; it insists upon two 
things as necessary : the mind must have con- 
cepts, ideas, and must use these ideas so that 
they will develop in the act of judging. An 
account of the steps by which the logician, 



74 Isolation in the School 

after discerning the errors in ancient and medi- 
aeval theory, has reached this position in a 
struggle of fifty years, would demonstrate the 
need for patience in surveying the rate at which 
the race progresses toward the attainment of 
truth. While the nineteenth-century logicians 
have been evolving theory based on these two 
essentials, popular opinion has clung to scho- 
lastic logic with its finished concepts, and its 
manipulation of these for the purpose of com- 
parison and classification. The origination 
and the process of judging have not been con- 
sidered as necessarily concerned with the evo- 
lution of mental power. According to popular 
theory, the initiative in the formal act has its 
rise in the obedient will, rather than in a state 
of tension induced in the mind by a doubt as 
to the unity of a simple fact, or complex of 
facts, and an explanatory comprehensive idea 
under which the facts, apparently, seem to 
gather. While it is true that the doubt may 
be occasioned by hearing another state the 
doubt as existing in his mind, yet it is not a 
doubt for the first person before his thought- 
movement is arrested by the question sug- 
gested. But having the tension made con- 
scious, there is still not the act of judging if 
the doubt is disposed of by reference to a fixed 



Isolation in the School 75 

idea. According to the lectures 1 upon which 
the following is based, when the idea is used 
unconsciously and without examination, we 
get simple apprehension only. Simple ap- 
prehension must be recognized as a mode 
of activity, but too long has it been con- 
founded with the act of judgment. The 
trouble is, particularly in institutional life, that, 
these processes being treated as identical, the 
subordinate individual is in a state of arrested 
development. He believes that he passes 
judgment on the inception of affairs and their 
conduct which are vital to the object for which 
the institution exists, when he merely refers 
new questions to a fixed idea for subsumption. 
The one in command is in a different state of 
arrested development ; one resulting from the 
lack of stimuli originating in judging the judg- 
ments of others which may be opposed to his 
own. The tyranny of an intellectual superior- 
ity is immeasurably severer than that of social 
class superiority. Cooperation in the realm of 
mind is of much slower growth than coopera- 
tion in the world of labor. The trained intel- 
lect isolated from the less formally trained 
fears the approach of an "intellectual democ- 
racy." 

The first step in enlarging the mental power 
1 Dewey, Unpublished Lectures on Logic. 



76 Isolation in the School 

of the mass of people living in civilization 
must be the change of this fear to faith in the 
latent tendency of the human mind to develop 
in accord with the divine mind. Instead of 
an acceptance of simple apprehension as the 
type of judgment best suited for those not 
gifted with the strong individualistic tenden- 
cies which make for social right-living, the 
great must make themselves greater through 
urging forward to the exercise of judgment 
those who through youth or subordination may 
tend to accept an ideal of the superior in age 
or position as the unvarying standard. The 
educated men and women who are accomplish- 
ing something, who are making the world more 
wholesome, never screen themselves behind an 
intellectual sentimentalism which fears a day 
when the poor in their hours of labor, as well 
as of rest from the struggle for life, will enjoy 
the things of the mind, because of a sturdy 
mentality. It is not the fact that the less 
strong distinguish between the fixed and fluid 
ideas that makes a part of the race decadent ; 
it is that the supposedly strong cannot so dis- 
tinguish when brought face to face with life in 
the institutions of society. 

Leaving the topic of simple apprehension, 
the question arises : What is the process of 
judging as analyzed by modern thought ? It 



Isolation in the School 77 

originates, as does simple apprehension, in 
doubt, but instead of fitting new things to an 
old idea, it sets up an interaction. The sub- 
ject of the judgment is not a something given, 
as the subject by a process outside of the judg- 
ment. Its given quality is something that 
judgment itself gives it. It is that which is 
taken as the basis for further investigation. 
This does not mean that the given will not be 
transformed by the process. It will be trans- 
formed. The given is data in scientific sense. 
Here we have, not a something carefully 
described by another, and this description, 
without analysis, set up as the subject of a 
judgment, but the very thing given assuming a 
functional activity when the process of judg- 
ing begins. It is not laid in a form prescribed 
by the old school of logicians, to be pressed 
under another. It arouses the intellect to an 
activity somewhat like attention in the psycho- 
logic process. The traits in the subject that 
bear on the doubt are selected as material for 
the new experience which will come out of the 
whole act. This subject is made more definite 
as its place in the whole situation becomes 
plainer. A point in moral or educational the- 
ory cannot form the subject of a judgment if 
it is kept isolated from the practical situation 
that obtains, and is treated as unrelated to the 



7 8 Isolation in the School 

past and present. It must make evident a 
reality which is to be placed in a system. But 
where is the interaction, between what ? Be- 
tween the subject, the question, the statement 
that has raised the doubt, and the predicate, 
the fluid idea. The subject is not mere exist- 
ence, and the predicate, idea, or meaning set 
over against existence. Such a distinction is 
misleading ; it seems to indicate that the two, 
existence and meaning, are separated, and the 
problem is how to unite them. They, the sub- 
ject and predicate, represent the same reality 
or experience, the same system. They are 
a distinction of aspects, not of portions or ele- 
ments. They are not distinguished before 
the act of judging begins, but it having be- 
gun, then the points of identity are estab- 
lished by the comparison of similar qualities 
in the presentation and the conception ; the 
points of difference are established in the 
same way. That comparison shall result in 
clear distinction, the mind must consciously 
set for itself the problem of determining the 
relative values of a certain definite phase of 
the unity involved in the subject and predi- 
cate. The activity in deciding what the un- 
certainty is, and then using and rejecting 
necessary and unnecessary elements which the 
mind marshals before itself, and finally gather- 



Isolation in the School 79 

ing the results into one unity, is that function- 
ing of the judgment which is in the natural 
process of the evolution of mental power. In 
this process the individual adds to his mental 
content by the classification always of the pres- 
ent capital, and by the demands made often 
upon that which was not previously known to 
him. In judgment, as treated by the latest 
scientific study, the two factors, individuality, 
and action and reaction, that is cooperation, 
are made indispensable ; the individuality lies 
largely in the origination ; the cooperation is 
the interchange between the situation as it is 
presented and the full, fuller, knowledge of 
the objective realm in which the elements 
which aroused doubtful condition have their 
free play. 

Each of the various processes herein dis- 
cussed originates in an activity which is the 
natural mode of expression of the individual, 
and is the positive influence in the continued 
evolution of the native powers until their de- 
cline sets in through disease or senility. Each 
may have its motif in an activity which is 
a quasi-natural mode of expression of the indi- 
vidual, and a quasi-positive influence in a 
development which is arrested before the 
native powers have reached maturity. Habits 
formed through the effort of the self to acquire 



80 Isolation in the School 

control of the impulses which seek for expres- 
sion ; attention trained through the effort to 
bring under control in the focus of vision im- 
ages which press forward ; judgment developed 
through the effort to identify and to differen- 
tiate qualities in two widely different aspects 
of a unity, are evolutionary. In such forma- 
tion of habits, training of attention, and devel- 
opment of judgment, the self directs every 
part of the organization, physical and mental, 
concerned in securing an end which is at first 
dimly suggested by the impulses, the interests, 
the doubts. As the activity goes on seemingly 
inharmonious tendencies gradually reinforce 
each other, inhibit opposing elements, and 
finally cooperate in a unified movement. These 
processes, so developed, constitute, from the 
beginning of life, the instrumentalities by 
which we advance to a more highly organized 
and, hence, simplified technic in all affairs, 
personal, economic, social, and political. They 
are the means by which we change, from time 
to time, our modes of work, of recreation, of 
thought ; transferring the stress so that we do 
not find ourselves left behind, able to manu- 
facture old wares only — wares which are no 
longer in demand ; do not find it easier to wear 
out in the old groove than to rest by change 
of interest ; do not find our judgment depre- 



Isolation in the School 81 

ciated by others because it persists in dealing 
with the concepts formed long ago ; depre- 
ciated because its decisions before rendered 
are familiar to the listeners. These last con- 
ditions in which men and women behold them- 
selves cut off from the onward movement of 
the world about them, isolated from the full- 
ness of life which gives healthful occupation 
for the body and the mind, are the results of 
that quasi-natural mode of activity which 
over-exercises certain muscles, or centers, or 
mental powers, in the attempt, through drill, 
to secure ends originated by others ; and of 
that quasi-positive influence which, for a time, 
often gives exact duplicates of those external 
aims ; but at last, in the words of Dr. Harris, 
'so arrest the development of the soul in a 
mechanical method of thinking as to prevent 
further growth into spiritual insight." 

In this method of training the self does not 
gain that control of its impulses which makes 
for unification, so that potentialities may be 
adapted to new environment ; it has acquired 
the power to do specific things in a specified 
place, and these isolated acts often prove 
handicaps in new surroundings with new de- 
mands, so that incapacity results from the 
non-recognition of the maleficent influence of 
isolation, where there should be unification 



82 Isolation in the School 

resulting from the natural and positive activity 
of the soul. The same holds true in regard 
to knowledge which has been acquired because 
someone has decided that such facts are useful. 
Knowledge, isolated from the cause which 
makes it a necessity to the learner, and from 
the effect which makes it valuable to him, is 
mere information which is rarely at command 
when called for. 

It would be a difficult undertaking to find a 
person who has the temerity to deny the exist- 
ence of a life-process in every vegetable and 
animal organism. That variations as to power 
in this or that part of the process are found in 
species and in individuals would be readily 
conceded, and that the process has its charac- 
teristic stages would be recognized. But, when 
the mental life-process is brought up for dis- 
cussion, it becomes evident that people do not 
so generally and thoroughly believe in it as in 
the life-process of a physical organism. That 
mind develops through functioning is an article 
in the creeds of most people ; but that it 
functions in obedience to law is an article 
which would be rejected from most of those 
creeds. The accumulation of statements of 
the observations and conclusions of others, 
the ability to recount in their order the steps 
taken by those others in making observations 



Isolation in the School 83 

and arriving at conclusions, would answer the 
general conception of mind-activity. Accord- 
ing to that general conception, those progres- 
sive modifications of the individual and society 
that mark an advance in power do not come 
because of the functioning of all minds. They 
have come as the product of the action of the 
thinking few, who are called thinkers because 
their mental life-process is carried on in accord 
with the law underlying it. 

Were faith in this law more common, fewer 
would conceive of good habits as something 
drilled in, in many a hard-fought battle ; of 
attention as a kind of struggle in manipulating 
images, a struggle during which is frequently 
heard from the lips of the one trying to set the 
aim of the activity, the exhortation : " Do 
stop guessing and pay attention ;" of judgment 
— but here in the purely intellectual realms of 
activity we find nothing comparable to those 
drills and exhortations, because the mind re- 
fuses to judge under direction. It may make a 
sycophantic pretense of agreement, but neither 
superior nor subordinate is deceived thereby. 
This breakdown in the realms of pure thought 
has given rise to the opinion that many 
naturally have no judgment, or at best only 
poor judgment ; that of the seething mass of 
humanity only a small fractional part is capa- 



84 Isolation in the School 

ble of any development beyond that secured 
in accord with the method that arrests growth. 
All through infancy and childhood, all 
through life until the time of decline, there 
are periods and seasons when certain activities 
are predominant. If in those different stages 
the dominant impulse or interest be given its 
natural free play, there will result those tastes 
and powers which make each soul know its 
peculiar talents. Every soul may not have 
sufficient individual energy to command recog- 
nition as being talented, but there are inherent 
in each those tendencies which, with their 
infinitesimal variations in grouping, make a 
being different from others — a being pecul- 
iarly itself. If these varied tendencies, ele- 
ments of strength, be developed in accord 
with the mental life-process, then will each 
human being know the joy of living in accord 
with its better, its true, nature. We revel in 
the beauties of forest and field, pouring forth 
our admiration over the modest violet and the 
stalwart oak, differing so widely, and yet each 
illustrative of the unity which pervades life. 
Only a brief survey is necessary in order that 
we may know how successfully either is 
carrying on the function of nutrition by which 
the plant maintains itself, and what stage it 
has reached in the reproductive function. 



Isolation in the School 85 

Our wonder and reverence do not terminate 
with the recognition of these two functions, 
which together make the life-process of every 
plant ; as we look at violets and oaks, the in- 
finitesimal variations are such that no two 
violets, no two oaks, are indistinguishable ; 
with the same antecedents, both structural 
and functional, there is in each violet and 
each oak that spontaneity which makes for 
a distinctive life. Herbert Spencer concludes 
his search for the cause of variation in indi- 
viduals and species with this dictum: "We 
must say in all cases, adaptive change of func- 
tion is the primary and ever-acting cause of 
that change of structure which constitutes 
variation, and that the variation which appears 
to be 'spontaneous' is derivative and second- 
ary;" yet he has missed the main question 
at issue. It is this : Why does one organism 
adapt itself to a change of function, while 
another heeds not the " unequal and ever- 
varying actions of the incident forces on its 
different parts"? The spontaneous action 
upon that for which its individual nature 
seeks is the cause of the " adaptive change of 
function." Professor Coulter 1 says : "It is evi- 
dent that there must be rivalry among plants 
in occupying an area, and that those plants 

1 Coulter, Plant Relations. 



86 Isolation in the School 

which can most nearly utilize identical con- 
ditions will be the most intense rivals. For 
example, a great many young oaks may start 
up over an area, and it is evident that the 
individuals must come into sharp competition 
with one another, and that but few of them 
succeed in establishing themselves perma- 
nently." Now, if all of this activity, this 
rivalry, of the young oaks is mere reaction on 
the environment, why do they not all react 
alike, and so all live or die together with the 
same adaptations to the peculiarities of the 
surrounding, stimulating conditions ? It is in 
the spontaneity of the successful individual 
oaks that the adaptations originate. Popular 
theory has made for humanity an advance 
upon, "All evils result from non-adaptation 
of constitutions to conditions," by saying: 
"Man must conquer his environment." 

Without further discussion of individuality 
in the vegetable world, this question may be 
raised: If each and every plant has its dis- 
tinguishing traits, which originate spontane- 
ously and give it individuality throughout 
life, how dare we deny to any soul the evolu- 
tion of its peculiar traits, which, spontaneously 
initiated, make for individuality; become its 
talents, its genius ? In the quotation from 
Professor Coulter there is a suggestion of that 



Isolation in the School 87 

competition which is comprehended in the 
"survival of the fittest," and so, on first 
thought, one would infer that development 
of individual traits would only increase the 
strife between the members of any human so- 
ciety, that individualism would rend all social 
organizations. Competition between myriads 
of human beings, all trained to a set end, is 
the result of the non-recognition of the life- 
process with its minute differentiations which 
make the special talents ; is the result of the 
isolation of the individual from the exercise 
of his right, in the beginnings of what should 
be an unfolding of all his potentialities. With 
the development which recognizes the essence 
of personality to be what the individual makes 
of his original equipment, a larger world will 
be open as the field of operations, and so each 
can more nearly approach the realization of 
possibilities which must forever lie dormant if 
each soul does not acquire throughout the 
voyage of life, more and more strength be- 
cause of a unified control of its variant powers. 
David Starr Jordan sums up environment and 
activity in a few telling sentences: "The pres- 
sure of environment gives only pain in itself. 
Ennui is chronic pain, nature's warning against 
the dry-rot of functional inactivity. To enjoy 
life man or animal must be doing — working, 



88 Isolation in the School 

thinking, fighting, loving — something positive. 
And no thought or feeling of the mind is com- 
plete till it has somehow brought itself into 
action." 

The greatest question before civilized na- 
tions today is whether the law of the mental 
life-process shall be recognized in education as 
original in all minds, or as peculiar to certain 
types only. Or, to put it in another way, shall 
the mental powers of the few be exercised ac- 
cording to law, and those of the many be iso- 
lated from that which evolves power — the 
initiative in action — or shall all be active as 
organic parts of the thinking world ? Rude 
self-assertion and hopeless self-renunciation are 
the attendants upon an abnormal mental re- 
straint, as disease and weakness are the attend- 
ants upon physical inaction. As a high degree 
of energy and reasonable powers of endurance 
are the result of a regimen in accord with the 
law underlying the life-process of the physical 
organism, so a well-poised self-assertion and a 
judicious self-renunciation are the results of an 
activity in harmony with the law underlying 
the mental life-process. 



III. 

THE FUNCTION OF A SCHOOL IN A DEMOCRACY. 

Following close upon this question of ac- 
tivity in the mental life as presented by modern 
theory is that pertaining to the function of the 
school in this government. In its general aim 
the function of the private and the public 
school is the same, but, because the latter is 
directly dependent upon the state for its life, 
it has been subjected to a closer scrutiny both 
as to methods and results. Critics of democ- 
racy and critics of the public schools unite in 
making essentially the same criticism on our 
form of government and on our schools, though 
they express themselves differently. The first, 
the critics of democracy, say that its tendency 
is to breed many commonplace, average men 
upon whom the responsibilities of the state will 
fall, instead of a few great men who might 
easily assume the duties of statesmanship 
Critics of the public school say that it is 
dominated by the theory of uniformity, and 
they ask why teachers who help to make the 
school a mere mill, grinding uniform grists, are 
retained. The obverse of this is found among 
the teachers. An energetic and thoughtful 



9° Isolation in the School 

part of the corps is strenuously decrying that 
form of systematism of the schools which 
tends to make automatons of the teachers. 
This opposition began before criticism of the 
method of the schools was well defined in the 
minds of those on the outside. Here we have 
a curious condition of affairs. The objects of 
the critics and the teachers seem widely dif- 
ferent. The first aim to purge the schools of 
the present type of teacher ; the second aim 
to displace the mechanical action of the school. 
Investigation will show their ultimate aims to 
be identical. With truth, the schools are fre- 
quently pointed out as the greatest unifying 
agent extant in this land, whose people repre- 
sent all European peoples, and yet who have a 
common faith in the integral principles of the 
constitution of its national and state organiza- 
tions. 

How varied are the races that have come 
from Europe ! Though of the Aryan stock, 
the branches have each their marked peculiari- 
ties. Not alone the differences in the Celtic, 
the Romanic, the Germanic, the Slavonic, and 
the Graeco-Italian blend, but the differences 
growing out of the social customs of the many 
nations into which long ago the races had 
divided have been brought into the public 
school to be minimized, obliterated, harmon- 



Isolation in the School 9 1 

ized in the process of unification. A survey 
of the past two hundred years shows the 
children of the poor and the rich, of the 
English-speaking and the non-English-speak- 
ing races, of the various religious faiths, 
all meeting on a common ground and with a 
common interest — the mastery of the printed 
page. As the young have striven side by side 
in the common school, they have learned, not 
from the printed page, but through experience, 
that the soul is not classified according to its 
worldly possessions, the particular language 
spoken in the home, or the faith in which it is 
reared. Differences in race customs might 
have been so intensified by the segregation 
of immigrants of different nationalities that 
open hostility would have been the prevailing 
attitude of different settlements toward each 
other. So potent has been the public school 
in creating a sentiment favorable to oneness, 
to Americanism, that sectional antagonism 
based on racial characteristics maintained in 
their original forms is unknown. In childhood, 
millions of America's citizens have learned 
something of the fundamentals in the unity 
of the human race. The comradeship in ex- 
perience developed by the democratic spirit 
pervading the methods in instruction and 
discipline, is a more positive factor in the 



9 2 Isolation in the School 

sympathetic appreciation existing between 
members of different religious and social 
organizations than the association in private 
or denominational schools can ever be. 

It is the free public school that has made 
the child of foreign parentage strive to take 
on the habits of dress, speech, and thought 
that would identify him with the people whose 
ancestors were merged into this social and 
political society at an earlier date than were 
his. 

Now, unification is concerned more with the 
spirit, the general aim, than it is with the 
reduction of the many elements to an unvary- 
ing form. The highest type of unification 
would be that which would send out into the 
world from the school boys and girls, young 
men and women, trained to clear thinking, 
active in their belief in a personal responsi- 
bility for the realization of the humanitarian 
idea underlying the form of government in 
which the American state is embodied. 

So rapid, however, has been the unexpected 
development of problem after problem that 
the school has begun to lose ground in this 
its greatest work. Unification was confounded 
with uniformity by the leaders, reformers, and 
organizers in their efforts to make that sys- 
tematic which was to a considerable degree 



Isolation in the School 93 

chaotic. The human mind, the most delicate, 
the most sensitive, the most complex of all 
organizations, loses power, is arrested in its 
development, if its efforts are directed toward 
establishing unvarying conditions in its own 
environment and in that of others also. Mind 
must continue to enlarge its environment, and 
increase its ability to cope with the forces that 
would restrict, or repress, its native powers 
and modes of action. For teachers and pupils 
to become parts of an "incoherent homoge- 
neity" is for them to lose in their school life 
that individuality which is the inherent right 
of every soul. An inspection of the courses 
of study, with their elaborate explanations of 
the method and scope in the presentation of 
the merely incidental, which followed the 
adoption of the plan of graded schools, would 
furnish abundant proof of the narrowing influ- 
ence of the attempts to organize through the 
establishment of uniformity in the minutest 
details of method. That the American people, 
who are so deeply imbued with the possibility 
of political self-government for all peoples, 
could have become infatuated with this idea 
of inflexible methods in training their children 
can be explained only on the ground of seclu- 
sion, isolation, from the great movements in 
the world. The consecration of their life as a 



94 Isolation in the School 

people to the idea of self-direction, self-control, 
made them magnify that which had been ac- 
complished, as the permanent result of high 
thinking and acting which would be a standard 
for all time to come. 

In the reaction against the exactitude and 
exactions of the narrow definiteness of uni- 
formity, indefiniteness is the predominant 
characteristic. Within and without the school 
are opposing parties ; one advocating a return 
to the old theory and practice which limited 
education by the state to acquaintance with 
reading and writing — the key to knowledge; 
the other insisting that the theory upon which 
a democracy rests, places upon every man and 
woman rights and obligations which cannot 
be intelligently comprehended by that part of 
the members having such slight preparation as 
the first party would give it. Whatever may 
be the attitude of the advocate of a narrow 
and superficial education, that openness and 
flexibility of mind which would prepare a 
people to cope with the changes that will 
come "through that irresistible force, the 
modern spirit," is the one which should char- 
acterize the mental attitude of all within the 
precincts of the school. Without this, the 
school will do little in adding to the grandeur 
of the future of America. A narrow provin- 



Isolation in the School 95 

cialism will merely groove deeper the ideas 
which once sufficed for a state whose people 
were laying the foundations for material neces- 
sities. Already have those ideas proved them- 
selves unequal to the demands upon them. It 
is this dominance of provincialism, with its 
limited ideas, not expanded to a comprehen- 
sion of what makes a state, which today makes 
much of the confusion regarding the relation 
of the state and school. 

The inadequacy of a theory of public educa- 
tion which recognizes past conditions only, 
and ignores those formative influences that are 
shaping the future, is becoming manifest. It 
is difficult to base a theory of public education 
on a conception of the meaning of human 
society and its organization that will guarantee 
to each individual the full exercise of his powers 
in preparing to help solve the problem of 
government by the people. The rapid develop- 
ment of natural science and its differentiation 
into many departments ; the opening out of the 
artistic world before an aesthetically starved 
people ; the recognition of the power, as well 
as the culture, that comes through linguistic 
and literary attainments , all of these have 
been potent forces in awakening the American 
people to the many aspects of knowledge and 
training. With the enlargement of the national 



9 6 Isolation in the School 

appreciation of the possibilities of culture and 
strength in the realms of science, art, and 
literature, there has been a tendency to attempt 
making all of these the possession of the 
young. One good resulted from this over- 
loading of the course of study: in the attempt 
to retain all subjects, attention was drawn to 
the isolation of each, and for a brief period the 
opposite of isolation, i. e n correlation, was the 
watchword of the day. There is as yet but 
slight change in the opinion of the two oppos- 
ing parties on the subject of state education, 
yet each is influencing the other and bringing 
the subject of the course of study of the 
schools into the field of social inquiry. This 
opposition presents the extremes of educa- 
tional theory and practice, which have ever 
been present in ancient and modern life. On 
the one hand, the narrowness and forcefulness 
of the past are extolled, while the indefinite- 
ness and superficiality of the present furnish 
ominous signs of decadence ; on the other 
hand, the wealth and variety of the present 
are regarded as indications of an enrichment 
of life, while the meagerness and formalism of 
the past are condemned. The settlement of 
these views by the state will materially influ- 
ence its own character in the future. If the 
school must oscillate between extremes, much 



Isolation in the School 97 

of its value as an institution of civil life must 
be lost, as in extremes there are evils that 
overwhelm much of the good in the theories 
which they represent. No fixed theory of 
education, as in China, is possible or desirable, 
but it should be possible to reduce the wide 
difference between the view of conservatives 
and of liberals in education as in politics, so 
that sound attainments and the modern spirit 
may always characterize the ideal of the 
public school. 

Although the private schools and universi- 
ties are not directly responsible to the state, 
yet there can be no evasion of their immediate 
relation to society and its welfare. The higher 
institutions are forging along, in the endeavor 
to command recognition as active factors in 
the forward movement of the nation. The 
lower private schools as a class are isolated, 
and yet they meet the approval of a portion of 
the many communities, because they are not 
bewildered by attempts to meet all the de- 
mands of modern utilitarian and culture 
theories. Nothing is more remarkable than 
the reversal of attitude by the public elemen- 
tary and secondary schools, and the private 
school and academy, in connection with the 
number of subjects in which instruction is 
given. The former is endeavoring to function 



9 8 Isolation in the School 

as an institution of the social world ; the latter 
is limiting itself to a definite task, that of 
meeting the requirements for admission to 
college. As a result, the one is attempting to 
leave no field of learning neglected, while the 
other is cultivating prescribed fields only. 
Several questions present themselves here. 
Are the public kindergarten, elementary, and 
scondary schools organic parts of a unity, co- 
operating with each other, or are they practi- 
cally isolated so that each in a measure dupli- 
cates the other ? Are they more nearly in 
touch with the spirit of American life than the 
private schools which are so closely connected 
with the colleges ? A careful comparison of 
the aims and method of public and private 
schools would be valuable. The broad ex- 
perience and range of work in the one would 
be suggestive in the light of the more limited 
and yet more intensive activity of the other ; 
the stress on power, rather than facts, in the 
one, and in the other the emphasis on the 
mastery of the foundations, are two phases of 
the educational life that should be weighed 
carefully. 

Interest in the problems of society and of 
government is leading inquiring students of the 
philosophy of right to turn to the school and 
ask what it is doing toward training for citi- 



Isolation in the School 99 

zenship. In return, the schools are experi- 
menting with the forms by which the machinery 
of political parties is operated. There are 
different methods in the schools, though the 
general object is the same : to familiarize the 
future citizens with the theory and method 
of the state of which they are to be a part. 
This is not the place to discuss the advisa- 
bility of beginning with the technique of 
civil organization, carrying on elections, run- 
ning for office, etc. Bishop Spalding's words, 
written without reference to this method, 
express one side of this question : " Do not 
our young men lack noble ambition? Are 
they not satisfied with low aims ? To be 
a legislator ; to be a governor ; to be talked 
about ; to live in a marble house — seems to 
them to be a thing to be desired. Unhappy 
youths from whom the power and goodness of 
life are hidden, who, standing in the presence 
of the unseen, infinite world of truth and beauty, 
can only dream some aldermanic nightmare." 
Whether the emphasis on forms in our gov- 
ernment will give a development other than 
on the mechanical side, whether it will illu- 
minate the underlying theory, whether it will 
develop great personalities are questions of 
paramount interest. Every boy and girl before 
going out from the schools of America 
LofC. 



loo Isolation in the School 

" should be educated into a self-consciousness 
of the essential equality and freedom of all 
men, so that he shall recognize and acknowl- 
edge himself in each and all ; " and though 
the transfer of monitorial powers and duties 
to the young may make the few appreciate the 
cares of the teachers in securing orderly con- 
duct, yet it cannot be effective in preparing a 
nation for self-government. 

Throughout the life of the public and private 
elementary schools the history of this country 
as described by its wars has been the subject 
of many an hour's excited discussion by child- 
ren ranging from twelve to fifteen years of age. 
With glowing hearts have they described the 
marches and the battles of the brave who have 
sunk to rest, blessed by their country. Eagerly 
have they searched for evidence of the courage 
and honor of their . heroes. Today, as the 
people of the North and the South endeavor 
to knit closer the bonds that make them a 
single nation, the children of one section are 
reciting the triumphs of the blue over the 
gray, and in the other the triumphs of the 
gray over the blue. This continued develop- 
ment of the hostile spirit between the young 
of the two sections brings into the foreground 
the question of the function of the school. 
Should the history of the blot on our name be 



Isolation in the School 101 

omitted ? Certainly not. But the story of a 
wrong wiped out and the fanning of the flames 
of sectionalism, are very different things to a 
patriot. The boys and girls trained to view 
the people of another part of this country as 
enemies are isolated from the influence of the 
great wave of brotherhood which is making the 
nation a unity. Has the concentration upon 
the objectionable conduct of our enemies 
tended to make the traveling host of Ameri- 
cans doubt the teaching of the schools, when 
the enemy has been met in foreign lands ? A 
good illustration of the effect of mistaken 
zeal in emphasizing the excellence of our own 
deeds, or those of our ancestors, was the ap- 
pearance before a school superintendent, of a 
delegation of mothers, descendants of the 
slaves of the old slave-holding South, to pro- 
test against the continual reference in class- 
study of our Civil War to "the slaves, the poor 
slaves whom we freed." That protest sugges- 
ted the need of a study, not of the ethics 
of war, but of the ethics of peace resulting 
from a war. A little reflection will satisfy one 
that in the study of history the young are not 
trained to a high type of citizenship by 
aggrandizement through the spontaneous 
identification of self with a masterful past. A 
broad knowledge of history and a fair degree 



102 Isolation in the School 

of familiarity with jurisprudence should be the 
least equipment of one who teaches the 
national history to boys and girls, if that 
study is to be effectual in advancing public 
morality. Political clubs that aim to develop 
public virtues by mere sensational orations 
before the history classes in the elementary 
schools, will find eventually that they have 
built on a quicksand. 

Unconsciously the American people have 
undertaken to solve the problem of laying in 
the home, the foundation for citizenship in a 
self-governing state. Necessarily their mis- 
takes have been many, and a few serious 
defects bid fair to become permanent. With 
all the mistakes, a careful observer must 
recognize the moral character of the advanced 
method that prevails in the intercourse be- 
tween parents and children. While the 
parent retains the right of final decision, yet 
the children are riot treated as being in a state 
of merely potential freedom in all things. The 
exercise of the right of choice in regard to 
conduct pertaining to affairs comprehended 
within their circle of thought and action will 
train their judgment so that in the larger cir- 
cles with the increased complexity of life, 
while the youth or adult will find more con- 
ditions to consider, there will not be new 



Isolation in the School 103 

problems wholly foreign to past experience. 
It is generally conceded that the children 
whose conduct is directed and controlled so 
that they are isolated from active origination 
of the same are the least prepared for the 
struggle in the world when they pass from the 
state of tutelage. 

In the recognition of the freedom of the 
human mind in its successive stages of devel- 
opment there are three ways in which teachers 
and parents may accord it : 

a) Children may be humored as if they were 
in a world of pretense, a world isolated from 
the real. Observation shows the results of this 
method to be the same that would be produced 
with human beings of any age. The results 
are pettishness toward the obstacles that con- 
front them and suspicion of the intention 
underneath the declared attitude of those 
having power to determine the general course 
of the opposing conditions. Much of the 
irritability and capriciousness of American 
children is due to the tendency of parents to 
play with a freedom which is not potential, 
but is a right. 

d) Children may be given freedom in all 
matters as if they were in the adult stage, 
many of whose impulses and interests should 
be foreign to the young. They have a claim 



104 Isolation in the School 

upon their parents for support and education, 
but during the continuance of the state in 
which that claim is in force there should be a 
distinction as to freedom in deciding upon 
matters connected with those conditions in 
which it is potential and those in which it is 
actual. 

c) Children may be justly treated by having 
them exercise freedom in origination and in 
realization of lines of conduct which are within 
the range of their reason and personality. 
Only upon reflection can parents arrive at a 
comprehension of the lines within that range. 
Upon the interpretation of " freedom is the 
soul's birthright" depends the moral training 
of the nation. 

Between the merits of the extreme which, 
on one hand, exacts obedience and subordina- 
tion to the dictates of teachers and parents in 
all things, and that which, on the other hand, 
grants all rights to children, it is difficult to 
decide. In each extreme the children reach 
adult life, devoid of that command of self 
which can be realized in the highest degree 
possible for each individual, only as the power 
of initiative and execution is exerted in the 
sphere to which the individual belongs in the 
evolution of his nature or character. To 
repress this power in connection with those 



Isolation in the School 105 

duties, in the performance of which the child 
is capable of exercising it, is to dwarf him ; to 
encourage the exercise of this power in con- 
nection with that which does not belong in 
the child's world of thought and action is to 
develop him prematurely. 

Never has the function of the school in a 
state been more plainly indicated than is that 
of the public school in this country in evolving 
a theory and practice of developing self- 
government for childhood and youth. The 
predominance given just now to the value of 
the school-training in fitting the coming men 
and women to carry forward the work of pop- 
ular sovereignty — a work to which this nation 
has consecrated itself — indicates the forcing 
of the old question, "What is the function of 
the school ? " into the consciousness of public 
thought, with the added idea that the school 
is a part of the state. All of this shows a 
broadening of the conception of a state. An 
interaction is being set up between the idea of 
a state and that of a school. The relation of 
the whole to its parts is undergoing investiga- 
tion. Though the political horizon is dark- 
ened by the clouds that lower about it, yet 
the light must break through them ere long, 
for the isolation of the various instrumental- 
ities of society is becoming a thing of the 



io6 Isolation in the School 

past. That liberty and equality which had 
disappeared in the national consciousness of 
political superiority are again open questions 
which must be interpreted by the light of 
original investigation and application. 

The school cannot take up the question of 
the development of training for citizenship in 
a democracy while the teachers are still segre- 
gated in two classes, as are the citizens in an 
aristocracy. 

No more un-American or dangerous solu- 
tion of the difficulties involved in maintaining 
a high degree of efficiency in the teaching 
corps of a large school system can be at- 
tempted than that which is effected by what is 
termed "close supervision." Frequent visita- 
tions to the schools in the district, or ward, 
bring the minutiae of each schoolroom into the 
foreground, and develop a feeling of responsi- 
bility for matters of petty detail which are of 
a purely personal nature ; and hence it fol- 
lows that a ranking officer may be so near to 
the daily work as to have an exaggerated, or 
mistaken, conception of the obligations of a 
superintendent in determining the method in 
regard to even the non-essentials in the con- 
duct of the school. In a short time the 
teachers must cease to occupy the position of 
initiators in the individual work of instruction 



Isolation in the School 107 

and discipline, and must fall into a class of 
assistants, whose duty consists in carrying out 
instructions of a higher class which originates 
method for all. The reaction from close 
supervision with one set of dominant ideas to 
close supervision with another set has been 
the basis of procedure in every large system, 
with little recognition of the fundamental diffi- 
culty in the theory. In colleges and universi- 
ties the benumbing theory of close supervision 
of the members of the faculties is unknown ; 
and yet it is generally held as an inspiring, 
natural one for elementary schools. There 
must come a recognition of the law of life in 
those schools. The rights and obligations 
that inhere in members in different parts of 
the system must be subjected to careful anal- 
ysis, and then the teaching corps must be 
unfettered in its activity in striving to realize 
those things which will evolve themselves in a 
free play of thought in the individual and the 
community. 

To secure this freedom of thought, there 
must be, within the various parts of the school, 
organizations for the consideration of ques- 
tions of legislation. Such organizations have 
been effected in some universities and in a few 
school systems, but in the latter they lack 
some essential features for securing freedom 



108 Isolation in the School 

of thought ; and yet they are deemed satis- 
factory ; so little does the teaching corps 
know about origination of thought on ques- 
tions concerning education. Without doubt, 
councils for discussion and recommendation 
may be organized, and seem to have an emi- 
nently successful life, and yet come far short 
of their potentialities. The voice of authority 
of position not only must not dominate, but 
must not be heard in the councils. There 
should be organized, throughout every system, 
school councils whose membership in the 
aggregate should include every teacher and 
principal. The membership of each school 
council should be small enough to make the 
discussions deliberative, not sensational. The 
necessity for such an organization that shall 
insure a free play of thought and its expres- 
sion, rather than courage in opposing and 
declaiming, because restive under restraint, 
cannot be made too emphatic. There should 
be a central council composed of delegates 
from the other councils. The representation 
in the central council should not be determined 
by ranking positions in the schools. It is fair 
to assume that the delegates would be selected 
with care. After recommendations have been 
made to the superintendent, and he, with the 
assistant or district superintendents and the 



Isolation in the School 109 

supervisors of special studies, has discussed 
them, if there are any points of difference in 
judgment, the district superintendents should 
meet the first councils and present the objec- 
tions. The attendance of members of the 
supervising force upon the meetings for the 
reconsideration of questions would clarify the 
thought of all, provided there was no suspicion 
of an effort to have the objections sustained 
because of the official position of the objectors. 
If the result of the second discussion shows 
the original recommendation by the council 
again sustained, and the superintendent upon 
receipt of the report believes the majority of 
teachers and principals mistaken, there should 
be no further effort made to secure the adop- 
tion of his views by vote of the councils. He 
should act i?i accordance with his own judgment, 
and be held respo?isible for the outco7ne. No one 
would receive the decision of the superinten- 
dent as something strange, unknown, to be 
incorporated in the work. The deliberations 
would have familiarized all with the essentials 
involved, and those sharp breaks in theory and 
practice which have been made in the past 
would no longer be possible. Education 
would be a continuous process, based on 
theory ; not mere experimentation, based on 
personal preferences. 



no Isolation in the School 

The most difficult line of action to pursue is 
that which respects the rights of other minds ; 
not the rights of property, but of thought. 
The number that can yield these rights to 
their owners is limited. To break down the 
barriers of selfishness behind which, in our 
assumed strength, we intrench ourselves; to 
participate in helpful communion with those 
who as yet have less experience than we, is to 
become an active member of a democratic 
solidarity. In such a solidarity will life in the 
school be noble. 

In monarchies and aristocracies it may be 
that the perpetuation of the particular form of 
government is dependent upon training the 
young for the station in life for which each is 
by the social organization destined. In this 
government the young cannot be trained for 
any particular station, for no one can foretell 
what that will be. Simply training free indi- 
vidualities will not suffice. Professor Mead 
makes plain the difference between the ancient 
and the modern conception of free individu- 
ality : "Greece furnishes a perfect illustration 
of the distinction between the freedom of the 
individual as an individual and the freedom of 
the individual as a factor in an organization ; 
leeway was given to individual opinion or 
speculation, but recognition of the individual 



Isolation in the School Hi 

as an organic part of the community was un- 
known. In the mediaeval period the indi- 
vidual and his development came into the 
public consciousness." In America today 
more than leeway in individual opinion is 
needed ; more than the recognition of the 
individual and his development. From the 
entrance upon the first year in the kinder- 
garten till the close of the student life, if the 
school functions as an intrinsic part of this 
democracy, the child, the youth, and the 
teacher will each be an organic factor in an 
organization where rights and duties will be 
inseparable ; where the free movement of 
thought will develop great personalities. 



. £ 1902 



JAN S 1902 



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